


i remember summer, dimly

by stitchingatthecircuitboard



Series: the mercy cut [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: (anyways......), (but WHEN shrieks my hindbrain), (i don't KNOW i shriek back), Alliance To Restore The Republic, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/F, F/M, Leia Naberrie, Luke Naberrie, Multi, Mustafar, Padmé Amidala Lives, Skywalker Family Drama, Skywalker Family Feels, Suitless Vader, breaking news: chapter three also VERY GAY i am a disaster and so is everything else!, but i promise romantic and/or sexy times eventually, chapter two is rlly gay because I can't deal w this het nonsense, character and relationship tags will be updated as we go? i guess?, for very superficial reasons if we're being completely honest, mature tag is mostly for implied and non-graphic violence and not nice-ness, no happiness here i'm basically screaming to myself as i write this thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 13:12:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 65,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6957883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchingatthecircuitboard/pseuds/stitchingatthecircuitboard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a secret compartment at the side of her bed — the bed they shared — there is a dagger. Long as her forearm, slim, elegant, deadly, it slides neatly from its hiding to sit against her skin, under her sleeve. She opens and closes her hand, remembering Sabé’s training, until the dagger leaps into her palm at the speed of thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one: padmé

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the way the world ends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record....this is entirely the fault of [Iain McCaig and Erik Tiemens](http://stitchingatthecircuitboard.tumblr.com/post/114128248464/wingedmonkey-so-pal-mia-culpa-shared-a-link-to), whose original Padmé designs have personally victimized me ever since I saw them.
> 
> Title from [Jennifer Crow's hauntingly appropriate poem, "The Mercy Cut"](http://vegaofthelyre.tumblr.com/post/143603922320/the-mercy-cut-by-jennifer-crow).

This is the way the world ends:

The Senate, thundering its approval in a deafening death-rattle; Sheev Palpatine, her first mentor and ally, who had nominated her for Theed and Naboo, grinning like a skull in its centre. Smoke across Coruscant from the spires of the Jedi Temple. Anakin, grim and unsettlingly sure of himself — _the jedi have tried to overthrow the chancellor — my loyalty is to the chancellor, to the republic, to you._ Obi-Wan, kindness an open wound on his face. Her child, stirring restlessly in her womb.

 

 

After Obi-Wan leaves, _i’m so sorry_ hanging in the air like ash, Padmé breathes, deep, uneven, chest hitching with stifled tears. In a distant, detached way, she knows that too much time has already been wasted in tears, and that there will be time to grieve when this is over.

This. Her hand settles on the curve of her womb, seeking, selfishly, reassurance, strength, from her child who depends upon her. Smoke still rises from the Jedi Temple, kilometres away. 

She breathes, quick and sharp, and dresses, her movements precise, tight, steady through practice. _You survived an invasion,_ she tells herself. _You saved your people, you have suffered war enough to scar a thousand worlds._

In a secret compartment at the side of her bed — the bed they shared — there is a dagger. Long as her forearm, slim, elegant, deadly, it slides neatly from its hiding to sit against her skin, under her sleeve. She opens and closes her hand, remembering Sabé’s training, until the dagger leaps into her palm at the speed of thought. 

The child, hers and Anakin’s, stirs inside her sleepily, resettling against her stomach. Padmé breathes. She will survive this, too.

She must.

 

 

Captain Typho is unhappy at the thought of her traveling alone. A small, scared part of her, longing for the safety and reassurance his presence implies, wants desperately for him to come along. Intellectually, Padmé knows it would be — prudent — to bring him. But something else, a gut sense, prickles at her spine: _bring him and he will die, padmé,_ it whispers, and too many already have died. 

It — this is between her and Anakin. This is not for outsiders. Padmé calmly relieves his concerns, words about the end of the war falling logically, persuasively from her mouth one by one. Captain Typho stays, but he isn’t happy about it.

On the skiff’s boarding ramp, Padmé pauses. “Captain,” she calls. Typho turns. 

“Milady?” Captain Typho says.

“Keep your comm on,” she says. “And, Captain — ready your own ship, as well. Get Rabé and Moteé ready in case the need arises.” 

“Senator!” He starts toward her, eye wide in alarm.

“Captain,” Padmé returns. He stops. “I am relying upon you.” 

Typho frowns at her, his eye narrowing. “Yes, milady,” he says, but she knows him too well to think that this conversation is anywhere near over.

 

 

Threepio chatters and frets by turn in hyperspace, brightly confident in his piloting skills one minute and anxious at her silence the next. The familiarity of his voice, a constant across the galaxy, soothes her; she practices releasing the dagger from its sheath on her wrist again and again, until her wrist aches and her fingers tremble.

“Miss Padmé,” Threepio says hesitantly, “are you quite sure you’re alright?”

Tears burn at her eyes. Padmé blinks them away.

“Threepio,” she says, voice somehow steady, “I need to tell you something.” 

Anakin — he means so much to all of them. Threepio’s maker, Artoo’s comrade-in-arms, her husband, her child’s father, Obi-Wan’s best friend. For a moment, she wishes she had told Obi-Wan, too, thinks that he deserved to know, but it’s too late, now. 

“We’re going to see Anakin,” Padmé says. There’s a faint ringing in her ears, blood pulsing through her hollow bones. She has not said this before, out loud to another. “I am — afraid of what he has become.”

“Why, whatever do you mean?” Threepio exclaims.

“Threepio,” Padmé says, “please listen to me carefully. When we arrive at Mustafar, I need you to stay in the cockpit. No matter what. Do you understand?”

“Miss Padmé?” Worry, anxiety in his voice; for a moment, Padmé allows herself her grief, her love for this man, her husband who built this droid of love and care for those he loved. 

“I fear,” she says carefully, “that Anakin is not himself. That he has hurt others, and that he may hurt me.”

“Master Ani!” Horror, this time, and disbelief. She can’t blame him.

“I am going to talk to him,” she says, “and try to help him. But I need you to be ready to take off at a moment’s notice, because I don’t know if I can help him, and I think that neither I nor the baby will be safe if I can’t help him.”

It’s cruel, to play on Threepio’s directives like that — his loyalty to Anakin, his loyalty to her, his loyalty to the baby, splitting him three ways, but this is not just about her. It cannot be. It is likely that Padmé and her child will die today with the Republic, but she must use every advantage she has to ensure her child’s survival, to press freedom back to life. 

“Of — of course, Miss Padmé,” Threepio says haltingly. “I will stay here until you return.” He tilts towards the transparisteel windows, then back to her. “I say,” he says, anxious but putting a brave face on it, “it is a good thing I’ve had so much practice flying!”

 

 

Padmé trusts Obi-Wan, as she has since he helped her save her people thirteen years before, since he slew a Sith and risked his career to take Anakin under his wing. She trusts, if only distantly, the members of the Council. She trusts, fiercely, as she would her handmaidens and the daughter Anakin believes they will have, Ahsoka. 

She does not trust Anakin.

Or — that is not quite right, not entirely. He has shared her bed these last three years, has settled into her very marrow; he is the custodian of her heart. But that is not so much a matter of trust as it was inevitability, of life and death and despair. Padmé loves Anakin with annihilating urgency, an absolute willingness to sacrifice herself for him. But she has not trusted him since Tatooine, and the Republic, in all things but her heart, comes first.

To say that Padmé loves the Republic is wholly inadequate. Can an atom love its star? Does a single cell love the whole to which it belongs? Love cannot describe the depth of her feeling for the Republic. She is a part of it. Without it, she will cease to exist. 

Death is not an option. She must live, if only for her child, if only to restore the Republic. There is too much at stake. 

 

 

The dagger jumps to her palm like a thought, faster than thought. It must, if she is to use it successfully. Anakin, always on the precipice of paranoia, has surely stumbled into it outright. Padmé breathes, even, steady, counting the pulse of her heart to clear her mind. 

This is what will happen when she arrives on Mustafar:

She will disembark. Threepio will stay on the ship, prepared to take off at a moment’s notice.

She will find Anakin, or he will find her.

She will hold him, or let herself be held; she will take his hand and lay it upon the swell of her womb, and say, with the fierce conviction that has made her the exceptional representative she is, _the republic must be restored; our child will not suffer the tyranny of a despot._

Or, she will whisper: _come away with me; help me raise our child in peace._

Or, she will take his face in her hands, gently, with all the tenderness she possesses, and say softly, _a galaxy without freedom is a galaxy in which we are all slaves._

No. She cannot, will not say that. She is not that cruel. She has no right to say that to him, not when he was a slave, not when he was ripped from his mother, a slave, not when they both failed Shmi. They have never discussed it — she has never known how — it would be the height of selfishness to throw it in his face now.

But can she afford to do otherwise? Can the galaxy? The Republic?

Despair reaches for her with a lightless hand. 

She will beg him, on her knees if she must, promise him anything she can, _help me restore the republic as it was meant to be._

_anakin — i cannot do this alone._

_anakin — i cannot live without that to which i have given my whole existence._

And? If that does not work?

Padmé breathes, eyes stinging in the dry cabin air. 

If that does not work —

The dagger jumps to her palm. 

 

 

On one of the missions she shared with Ahsoka, just Ahsoka — to Alderaan, she thinks — Ahsoka had taught her the theory behind protecting oneself from Force surveillance. The trick, Ahsoka had said, was not to avoid thinking about what must be hidden, but throw it behind a veil of disarray. 

“Like,” Ahsoka had said, “if you’re _trying_ to not think about — let’s say a pink bantha — then what’s gonna be on your mind? Pink banthas. So, instead, shuffle that pink bantha into a mess of thought on zoological diversity across the galaxy. Make the pink bantha completely ordinary. That way, if someone comes looking for specific details on that pink bantha, they won’t find it because you’re not hiding it, _and_ it’ll be the least interesting thing in your brain.”

“Hiding in plain sight,” Padmé had observed, and Ahsoka had grinned.

“Well, sure, if you want to be boring about it,” she’d said, “but pink banthas are way more fun.”

 

 

The dagger winks up at her from her palm. Padmé stares at it. 

“Miss Padmé,” Threepio says hesitantly from the pilot’s seat, “we will emerge from light speed in approximately ten minutes.”

“Thank you, Threepio,” she says automatically.

How to hide the dagger?

Padmé closes her eyes, and breathes. She remembers Obi-Wan’s heartbroken compassion, Bail’s quiet grief, the smoke from the Jedi Temple. Her fear, for herself, her child, the Republic, her husband; her horror at that of which he stands accused; her love, her anger, her worry, and the hurt beneath her ribs where a heart should be. The sting of salt at the corner of her eyes and the scraped-raw feeling at the back of her throat from all the sobs she has swallowed since Coruscant. 

If — _when,_ Anakin is a general, has spent his entire life looking over his shoulder, and even if he hadn't — he loves her, worries for her, wants, desperately, to protect her. Her arrival, her obvious anxiety, will worry him, and he will look immediately for the threat. 

So, when Anakin goes looking — he will not find the danger in her sleeve.

At least, this is what she hopes.

 

 

From orbit, she knows: Mustafar is poison. Fear and aversion roil in her belly, a reaction so instinctive that she barely registers it before she’s bent over in the ’fresher, emptying the scant contents of her stomach. Wiping her hand across her mouth, trembling, Padmé curls against the wall, bile sour in her throat. Her hands shake. She shudders. Her child shifts, anxious, palm pressing against her womb.

“Miss Padmé? Are you quite alright?” Threepio’s voice, even through the thin door, is laced with panic. 

She is not alright. 

“Come in, Threepio,” she says. Her voice wavers. She hopes he does not hear it.

The door slides open. “Miss Padmé? Is there anything I might do?”

“Some water, please,” she says, and takes the glass when he hands it to her.

“I regret to say,” Threepio ventures after a moment, “but I cannot land the ship by myself, Miss Padmé. If only Artoo were here.”

“Hopefully, we’ll see him soon,” she manages. “Help me—”

Well-used to helping her stand by now, Threepio takes her raised hands and stands solidly still until her feet are beneath her. What would she do without him, this most loyal gift from her husband? And Artoo — what will become of Artoo, if she fails to reach Anakin? What will become of Threepio without his oldest friend?

She breathes.

“Let’s find Anakin,” she says.

 

 

Padmé pilots on the way down. She does not know where on the planet Anakin will be — he had not told her, she cannot track his ship — but she knows, somehow, instinctively, as though she can see him amidst the smoke and lava, where it is she will find him. Threepio does not ask, in an unusual show of restraint, and she is grateful. She would not know how to explain it to him.

The ship settles gracefully on the landing platform closest to Anakin; distress, loathing hit her like the heat rolling up from the molten rivers. She presses her hand against her mouth to stifle the bile and the whimper that want to burst forth. For a long moment, she simply sits in silence, Threepio creaking at her side. 

Distantly, Padmé understands that this is the last moment in which she will be able to hope for Anakin. After this, either he will come back to her or he will not. She will lose him, or she will not. Either way, she will have done all she can for him. If she survives this, there will be others who need her help more urgently than him. 

At the other end of the complex, a hooded figure turns, stares, breaks into a run. Anakin. She would recognize the rhythm of his movement anywhere, the habit of his gaze. He is coming for her. This is the end.

She rises, laying her hand lightly on Threepio's shoulder. “Remember," she says, "be ready.”

“Of course, Miss Padmé,” Threepio says. 

She breathes, hopes, steels herself. _Ancestors,_ she prays, _protect my child. Return my husband to me. Help me to safeguard the galaxy._

The boarding ramp descends, hydraulics hissing. Hands shaking, Padmé makes her way down the ramp, into the suffocating heaviness of Mustafar’s atmospheric ash and heat. Anakin is running across the platform towards her, and, helplessly, she runs toward him, reaching for him with instinctual desperation. He takes her in his arms, pulling her close, kissing her, his hand grazing the curve of her womb as if to check in with their child, to make sure they both are safe. 

“I saw your ship,” Anakin says, something ragged at the edge of his voice. His hands cradle her face between them, tender and protective. “What are you doing out here?”

She realizes, abruptly, that in spite of her imaginings during the trip, she has no idea what to say, no idea how to convince him to abandon this course of action. They have never agreed on politics. 

“Hey,” Anakin says, gentle, worried, as he’s been since the start of her pregnancy. His hands brush her cheek, the fall of her hair. “Padmé. What’s going on?”

She presses forward, the synthleather of his tabard creasing her cheek. She does not trust Anakin, has not since his mother’s death, but she loves him, and she has never doubted his love for her, his desire to protect her. Even fearing him, she has never felt safer than in his arms.

"I was worried about you,” Padmé says, turning her face up to his. “Anakin — with everything — the attack at the Temple, the Jedi dying — everything is falling apart. The Chancellor has destroyed democracy, Anakin—” Unbidden, the tears she has swallowed since Obi-Wan’s visit that morning burst forth, and Anakin moves to steady her, hands on her shoulders, uncertain anxiety in his expression.

“Padmé,” he says, “it’s okay, it’ll be okay, please—” He shifts, lowering them both until they’re curled together on the platform, his arms secure around her and their child, her head tucked beneath his, her fingers trembling in the folds of his tunic. With the care he has always taken with her, he brushes his hand, his flesh-and-blood fingers, to wipe away her tears. 

“Anakin,” she whispers. Her resolve wavers. She cannot do this; she must. “Ani — I’m so afraid.”

Immediately, he relaxes, eyes up, scanning for threats — he has always been most comfortable with a lightsaber in his hand, when action, not words, rule the day. “There is nothing to fear, my love,” he says. “I have ended the war, I have found a way to protect you, to save you from my nightmares. You are _safe,_ Padmé.”

Her blood freezes in her veins. Not for her — he did not do this for her, ancestors, please —

“You’re still afraid,” Anakin says, self-recrimination a bite in his words. “Who is making you afraid, Padmé? Tell me, I’ll—”

“No, Anakin,” she says, fierce, panicked, her hand tightening spasmodically on his tunic. “Anakin, I — _I love you._ But I’m so afraid of what you’ve done.”

“What _I’ve_ done—” he begins, incredulous and defensive, but she stops him.

“Obi-Wan came to see me,” she says.

Anakin freezes, suddenly rigid, inflexible around her.

“Anakin,” Padmé says, voice breaking, “he said — he said that you helped the Chancellor overthrow the Jedi, that — that you, you’ve murdered _younglings,_ that—” Tears break out anew, and she wants nothing more than to tuck herself closer to him, close enough that they may as well be one being, to be comforted, protected by the warmth of his presence. 

“Obi-Wan is trying to turn you against me,” Anakin says firmly, but guilt twists sharply through him, she can sense it, even without looking to his face.

“Anakin,” she whispers, “did you kill the Jedi younglings?”

A muscle twitches in his jaw. “The Jedi planned to destroy the Republic, to betray the Chancellor," he says coldly. “They were traitors and they were treated as such.”

If there were anything left in her stomach, she would vomit. Unsteadily, Padmé pushes away from him, gets awkwardly to her feet, moves away, her hand over her mouth. “Ancestors,” she breathes. _Younglings._ Children no different from her child except in age, and slain by her husband, the father of her child, for the simple fact of their existence. 

“Younglings,” she says, or thinks she does; she cannot quite hear herself, but Anakin has moved to her side, watchful, resentfully wary. “Anakin—”

A terrible thought pierces her.

“Anakin,” she whispers, “—are you going to kill our child?”

He rears back as though she had struck him. “What—? How can you even ask me that?”

“You murdered _younglings!”_ Padmé shouts, “I don’t — I don’t know you anymore!”

“I did it to _protect_ you, to protect our child!”

She stumbles; he moves at once to catch her, steady her, help her to sit. This is the end. This is hell. 

“Anakin,” she whispers, “you’re breaking my heart.”

He looks away, grim-faced and angry, but turns back and settles at her side with obvious effort. “Padmé,” he says with an attempt at calm, “you’re hysterical. You’re not thinking clearly. The pregnancy has been hard on you.”

He’s trying to convince himself as much as her, she realizes.

“But everything I have done, I have done to keep you safe,” he insists. “When this is over, you’ll, you’ll see that.”

She’s crying again: the deep, chest-hitching sobs of absolute panic, of terror, of grief.

“Hey, c’mere,” Anakin says, suddenly anxious again, anger slipping below the surface, and he pulls her into his arms, durasteel hand rubbing soothing circles into her back, flesh hand on hers. “It’ll be alright, Padmé, you don’t have to be afraid anymore — we don’t have to hide, I’ve brought peace to the Empire, we can rule the galaxy together.”

In his embrace, Padmé does not move, does not jerk violently away from him; slowly, her sobs abate, and she can breathe again. He is lost to her, truly lost. There is only one way forward. Padmé closes her eyes. 

Anakin is humming something soft, soothing, into her hair. She reaches tentatively toward his face, her fingers brushing his cheekbones, the line of his jaw. He looks back at her inscrutably. When did his face become a cipher to her?

“I love you,” she whispers, and he relaxes against her.

“I love you, Padmé,” he murmurs back, “always. I’ll always be here for you. I’ll always keep you and our child safe. I promise you.”

Her hand curls against his cheek; her other, she moves to lie against his chest. His flesh hand falls to her waist, to the swell of their child between them. Lightly, tenderly, she draws his mouth to hers, and kisses her love, her sorrow, her forgiveness to him. Her heart hurts. She kisses that to him, too.

Her hand, between the synthleather panels of his tabard, shifts, moving as though to curl deeper into his tunic, and he stills, breaking away to stare at her, mouth open in surprise. The dagger glints in his chest.

“Padmé,” Anakin says, or tries to, blood wet in his throat, the roof of his mouth. His hand spasms at her side, and she pulls away, her hand at the crown of his head to lay him gently on the ground. He stares at her, confused, bewildered, furious, his hand moving to bat weakly at the blade in his chest. 

“I’m sorry, Anakin,” Padmé says, “I’m so sorry. I love you. I’m so sorry.”

He frowns, pushing up clumsily from the platform. There’s a thin, filmy bubble of blood at the corner of his mouth. “Padmé—” he rasps, “what—” His expression twists, ugly; she can't tell if it’s from pain or rage or hate or all of them, but she would cut out her own heart to see it wiped from his face. “You—” He has to stop, his flesh arm failing him, his durasteel fingers scrabbling at the platform tiles, and he falls back with a grunt. 

“It's okay, Ani,” she whispers, and strokes his hair gently. “It's okay.”

His eyes, blue like the Tatooine sky, like the waters of Lake Varykino, burn up at her. The fires of Mustafar, Padmé thinks, give them that peculiar, unsettling amber hue. “Padmé,” Anakin rasps, and then his expression hardens, his eyes blazing gold, and he braces himself against her to stumble upright.

“Anakin,” she cries, moving to steady him instinctively, as he has steadied her countless times, but he pushes her roughly away, and then she sees: Obi-Wan, haloed in the ship's bright lights, staring at them, frozen. 

_“You,”_ Anakin chokes — a snarl, if he could breathe — and stumbles, falling to his knees. Obi-Wan moves toward them, slow, as if dazed, but the horror in his eyes is all too aware. 

“Padmé,” Obi-Wan whispers, “what have you done?”

Padmé catches at Anakin’s shoulders, desperation making her clumsy. “What are you _doing_ here?!” she shouts at Obi-Wan, and then, “Anakin, please — Ani, be still, _please—”_

He pushes her away again, hard; she stumbles. She’ll carry a bruise of his durasteel hand with her for a week, but it finally jars Obi-Wan into action. He speeds forward, steadies her, and does not react when she pulls away from him raggedly — but something does react, a pressure she remembers with intimate clarity protecting her at the bottom of the Dac oceans, catching her in mid-air on General Grievous’ ship, and moving tenderly, playfully against her while Anakin watched, dark-eyed, hands occupied elsewhere. 

Padmé knows what the Force feels like when wielded by her husband. But it has never been used like this — with cold intent to _hurt._

She cannot breathe.

Her hands move instinctively to her throat, to pry at the grip closing her trachea, but there is nothing to fight, nothing to touch: just rage, anguish, hate, suffocating her as much as she suffocated him, his lungs collapsing under the pressure of Mustafar’s ash-ridden atmosphere and his own blood filling his chest cavity. 

Dimly, Padmé registers Obi-Wan moving toward Anakin, pained, shouting something she cannot quite comprehend, but his hands hover just out of her husband’s reach, as though afraid to touch, to know what his hands would do.

And then, Anakin’s hand drops, that awful molten colour fading from his eyes, and she can breathe; and then he, too, falls to the duracrete platform. Behind him, shock prod extended, is Artoo.

Obi-Wan is at once by her side. “Padmé,” he says, “let me — we’ve got to get out of here, this isn’t safe, we must go—”

Her instinct, immediately, is to pull away again, to run to Anakin, to make sure he’s comfortable; to stay with him until the end. But still, her throat aches, her shoulder throbs painfully, and she came here to kill him. She is no longer safe with him. She has no right to assuage her guilt in comforting him.

“Alright,” Padmé whispers, “come along, Artoo, Threepio’s waiting.” She has to comm Typho and Sabé and Queen Apailana, and Bail and Breha and Riyo and Mon, and she has to work with Obi-Wan to find surviving Jedi, and she has to safeguard herself, her children, her family —

Padmé stops.

“Padmé,” Obi-Wan says, insistence covering what she knows is the same desperate terror she feels, “we must go—”

“I know,” she says, and steadies herself with a hand on Artoo’s domed head. “Just—”

Something wet seeps down her legs.

“Oh,” she says. “My water just broke.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) what and why am i doing  
> 2) i've got plans? we'll see how quickly we get there, though  
> 3) additions will be made as chapters, i've got the vague idea that there will be 10 total but who knows  
> 4) unbeta'd, all mistakes are my own  
> 5) [anguished howling into the abyss]  
> 6) if you also have feelings, drop a line with your fave ice cream and comfort movie/show/fic. mine is: ben & jerry's half baked and bob's burgers.


	2. two: padmé

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sabé grins at her, teeth bright, a little feral. “Just like the old days, my lady?”
> 
> “Honestly, I would rather deal with a thousand Nute Gunrays than a tyrannical Palpatine,” Padmé replies; “but, yes.”

 

 

It is, Padmé thinks, a reflection both on the direness of the situation and the differences between them that Obi-Wan is more distressed at her impending labor than Anakin ever would have been, prophetic dreams notwithstanding. Upon his return to Coruscant, Anakin had voraciously researched human pregnancy, wanting, she realizes, to drown out his nightmares with solid facts and millennia of medical experience. Anakin knew her body, knew the procedure, and, what’s more, had practical experience. Shmi may have done her best to shield her son from the hardships of life, but he still learned the ins and outs of midwifery. 

As it is, between Obi-Wan’s discomfort and misery and Threepio’s general anxiety at the slightest sign of trouble, Padmé is left in the medbay with only Artoo to look after her.

“Not,” she says through gritted teeth, “that you aren’t the best available candidate, Artoo, but—”

He warbles at her sympathetically.

“Yes,” she says, wondering if he understands the heartbreak in her voice. “I’d rather have a mechanic who knew my system on hand.”

He whistles, sad, and bumps up under her hand as if in comfort, and stays with her as she slowly circles the room. _Keep walking as long as you can_ , she remembers Moteé telling her, and she is suddenly, miserably lonely. Padmé never imagined going into labor with only two droids and a heartbroken Jedi to help her; it has always been a given that Rabé and Moteé would be with her, and that Sabé would come as soon as possible, that Dormé and Eirtaé would join them, that her handmaidens would shield her and her child as fiercely and as lovingly as they had protected her as queen. 

If nothing else — if even Mon and Riyo were available, that would be enough; if she had been free enough to trust them, to trust her mother, her sister Sola —

In this moment, despairingly, Padmé hates Anakin for not being here, and herself for killing him. _he loves you, padmé,_ she thinks, _he sought only to protect you; would it really have been so terrible, to retreat from it all and be made safe by him?_

But Anakin’s idea of protection is a cage, whether he admits it to himself or not, and that is intolerable to her.

Artoo beeps gently at her side, a soothing melody of conversation. Binary has never been as clear to her as it has been to Anakin, but Padmé knows enough to register his concern, his worry, his devotion to her wellbeing. He is a Royal Naboo astromech, and she once was Queen; she suspects, for all his irreverence and independence, he still views her as such. 

A contraction hits, seizing at her womb, and she cries out, grasping at the edge of the medbay’s cot, the rail along the side for support. Artoo whistles, anxiously, and she smiles in spite of the pain.

“I know,” Padmé says, voice hoarse from Mustafar still, “and I appreciate it, but please don’t electrocute my pregnancy.”

He beeps, disgruntled, but stays steady at her side, ready to support her weight if necessary. She straightens as much as she can, and resumes her walk, her hand light on Artoo’s domed head.

There’s a knock on the door. “Come in,” she says. 

Obi-Wan steps inside, expression distant, reserved. “I’ve made contact with Senator Organa,” he says. “We will rendezvous with him and Master Yoda at Polis Massa. There’s a Kallidahin research base on one of the asteroids, with an excellent medical facility. We should arrive there shortly.”

“Alright,” Padmé says, strained, and clenches her jaw and tries to swallow the groan that comes with her next contraction. 

Obi-Wan watches her a moment, hand raised in an abortive gesture of comfort, of contact. “Senator—” he says, “—Padmé. I know we have much to settle between us, but I would like to offer you some comfort, if I may. A Force-technique to mitigate the pain.”

She shivers, involuntary, the ghost of her husband’s betrayal heavy around her throat. Obi-Wan’s hands drop back to his sides. Artoo whistles plaintively. Padmé breathes around the pain.

Obi-Wan is not Anakin. She trusts Obi-Wan as she has not trusted her husband since before he was her husband, but — but that was before Obi-Wan stowed away on her ship with the intent to kill Anakin. That was before he found her with his best friend’s blood on her hands. 

“Ancestors,” Padmé breathes, harsh, and lifts a hand to her face: it’s an unsettling raw color, her fingerprints criminalized with rusty whorls. Her legs give way underneath her, but Obi-Wan catches her before she can slip more than a centimetre in the ship’s artificial gravity, and helps her to the cot.

“Let me,” he says, eminently gentle, and guides the medbay’s sonic nozzle to her bloody hands, directed away from the ache of her child. His hands are kind on her own, after, and there is no recrimination in his gaze. “Padmé,” he says. “How can I help?”

Padmé swallows. “I need to keep moving as long as possible,” she says. “And I need Artoo to time the contractions. And, and I need to stay hydrated, and I need to hold together for him, for the Republic, we’ve got to get to Bail and Mon and Riyoo, I need to comm Typho and Sabé, and the Queen must be briefed —”

“Very well,” Obi-Wan says after a moment. “We will take things one step at a time.” He rises, fills a glass with water, and hands it to her. “Drink this. Artoo?”

The droid beeps indignantly.

“Artoo is already timing your contractions,” he says, smiling. Anakin must have briefed Artoo; in case she were alone with the droids when she went into labor. 

“Artoo and I will help you keep walking until we reach Polis Massa,” Obi-Wan continues, “and once there, Bail will update you on the Senate. If you would like, I will comm Captain Typho for you now, so that he does not worry unduly.”

She could kiss him; she could weep. “Please,” she says, voice cracking, and gasps as another contraction hits. Obi-Wan stays with her, letting her squeeze his hands with Jedi patience, until the worst of the pain is passed; then, he goes to contact Typho.

 

 

By the time they reach Polis Massa, Padmé can barely stand. She has sweated through her undergarments and her pants are soaking; she feels disgustingly vulnerable, when the pain clears enough that she feels something other than being split in two. How often has her wardrobe been her finest weapon and strongest shield? And now, to find it inadequate to the task —

Obi-Wan helps her down the boarding ramp, Artoo and Threepio chattering anxiously behind them, as Bail and a med team hurry towards their dock.

She screams; she doesn't know for how long. Her body screams with her. Meddroids hover around her, either infuriatingly chipper or infuriatingly soothing. She wants neither. She wants it to stop. 

Obi-Wan stays with her every hour, his hand white-knuckled in hers, his face full of concern, of compassion. She screams; he neither balks nor judges; he holds her, and, she thinks, touches her with the Force when she cannot even think to hear herself through the pain.

And then, at last, at last: her son, the child she’d known would come, and her daughter, whom Anakin had seen. “Luke,” Padmé whispers, and “Leia.” Names found on Naboo and Tatooine by cosmic coincidence, scattered like sand by the ancestors among the stars. Luke, light-bearer, and Leia, the dragon, star-children, sky-walkers, both. Her bruised heart burns with love for them: Leia’s soft, sleepy, questing hands, Luke’s somber gaze, and the love she feels rising from them like a sun over water. “My children,” she whispers in awe, “my twins.”

Beside her, Obi-Wan’s eyes are wet, and she reaches for him, too, instinctively. 

 

 

Hours later, after she’s been cleaned and settled in a real bed, her children curled together at her side, her door slides open. Padmé blinks slowly awake, and her heart stops at the figure in the doorway.

“Sabé,” she breathes, and Sabé rushes to her side, noiseless and graceful, her expression open and relieved and loving. For a long moment, they hold each other in silence, Sabé’s hands tight, secure on Padmé’s ribs, Padmé’s head tucked into Sabé’s shoulder, and then Sabé toes off her boots and shifts up the bed, her body between Padmé and the twins and the closed door, a living shield to protect them.

Sabé touches Padmé’s cheek lightly, with unconditional gentleness. “Sleep, my lady,” she murmurs. “The galaxy will keep until morning.”

 

 

When she wakes, Sabé is already dressed, and still at her side. She smiles at Padmé, and brushes a feather-light kiss over her brow.

“Good morning, my lady,” Sabé says softly.

“Sabé,” Padmé says, “I am so glad you’re here.” But there’s a question in her voice, and Sabé understands her instantly.

Sabé stretches, languid, along her side. “Typho got word to the Queen,” she tells Padmé. “Yesterday. Your Jedi contacted him, and Rabé and Moteé argued that it was too dangerous for them to leave Coruscant right away. So Apailana dispatched me immediately, and she intends to recall your household to Naboo in a few days, so they have an excuse to leave the capital.”

“Oh,” Padmé says, groaning. “Sabé, there is so much to do.”

“I know, my lady,” Sabé says gently, “but you are not alone. And it is time to start the doing.” She rises, helps Padmé settle into a more upright position, gives her vitamins and a mild pain reliever with a tall glass of water. 

“The twins,” Padmé murmurs. “Where—”

“Dormé has them, my lady,” Sabé says gently. “She arrived a few hours after I did, and took the children to feed them this morning, not twenty minutes ago. We will meet them in the medbay; we need to start pumping your milk for them. And then, we will meet with Senator Organa and Master Kenobi and Master Yoda to discuss this Empire.” Scorn and disgust drip from the last word, and Padmé squeezes her hand gratefully.

“But for now,” Sabé says, “let us get your dressed, my lady. Dormé brought some gifts for you.”

 

 

Dormé’s gifts are stunning. Beautiful, regal, and practical, with strong, comfortable boots and draping capelets that cover a craftily buttoned undershirt. She will not have to navigate countless layers and robes to feed her children. 

In the medbay, she holds Leia, Luke dozing in Dormé’s arms, as milk pumps from her breast and Sabé combs out her tangled hair. For a moment, Padmé feels ashamed, embarrassed; when was the last time her hair was such a mess? Surely before her queue of humanitarian youth programs. But Sabé’s hands are gentle, teasing apart knots and massaging her scalp until Padmé feels positively boneless. 

By the time they go to meet Bail and the Jedi, she feels like a new woman. Her hair is pulled back and up in a coy twist; her face is lightly powdered; and Sabé has silently painted a blue teardrop on each cheek, with Naboo woad, for mourning, and scarred her lip with remembrance in gold, for resilience. Dormé and Sabé flank her, each holding one of her children, and Padmé has missed this, this loyalty, this authority, the conviction that she is doing what is right and what is necessary, that both can be accomplished.

She may have been too young to be Queen, she may have been relieved to step down from her post, but ancestors, she misses it.

The men stare, Bail with surprise, Yoda with suspicion, Obi-Wan with quiet understanding. Of the three of them, he had spent the most time on Naboo, and, upon his conferred citizenship, learned the most about her culture.

Padmé sits, graceful and relaxed in spite of the ache in her womb and back; Sabé and Dormé sit at each side.

“Gentlemen,” Padmé says with more calm than she feels. “Shall we get started?”

 

 

“Senator Organa and I,” Padmé begins, “along with select members of the Delegation of 2000, have been preparing a more active resistance to the Chancellor. And while I am certain that known allies of the Delegation, not to mention Naboo, Alderaan, and Chandrila, will be scrutinized in the months to come, we can still set things in motion.” She pauses, looking Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Bail in the eye. “The first order of business, I believe, should be the new Emperor.”

Bail nods grimly. “I agree. The best time to strike at a new monarch is before their power is solidified, before security has settled into place. And since I believe our chances of capturing and holding him for trial are infinitesimal at best, we must accept the probability that assassinating him is the only way we can restore the Republic.”

But Yoda shakes his head.

“Failed, I have, in facing the Emperor,” he says heavily. “Into exile, I must go.”

Obi-Wan says nothing; Bail exchanges a grim look with Padmé.

“Excuse me,” she says sharply. “I'm sure I misunderstand you. Plan A didn't work, so that’s it? The only possible contribution to democracy you can make is to kill a tyrant? How can you possibly believe that?”

“Lost the Order, we have,” Yoda says, something terrible and resigned in his voice. “If to survive, the Jedi are, save ourselves, we must.”

Bail’s face creases in sympathy, but Padmé barely pauses for breath, indignation and a fierce desperation fuelling her salvo. 

“Respectfully, Master Yoda,” she says coldly, “I fail to see how exile is conducive to preserving the Jedi Order. We need to be searching for survivors and recovering as much information from the Temple as we can — that will do more to preserve your Order than running away from our problems.”

“I agree with the Senator," Obi-Wan says abruptly. “We cannot in good conscience abandon our family to a galaxy ruled by the Sith. We must search them out. But perhaps a compromise may be reached.” He looks from Padmé to Yoda. “Perhaps, Master Yoda, you could search out a base for us, where the Jedi can heal and prepare for this next war.”

Padmé considers. “I accept. Master Yoda?”

For a long moment, Yoda says nothing; and then, his shoulders sag. “Lost, we did,” he says heavily, “when warriors instead of peacekeepers, the Jedi became. Unwilling, I am, to wage war again.”

Padmé reaches across the table, her hand an open offering. “I have opposed war since I was a child,” she says, soft. “Every action I have ever undertaken has been to prevent or stop galactic conflict. But the idea of surrendering my freedom to a tyrant and a murderer is more intolerable than raising my hand against him. We would welcome your support, Master Yoda, in any way you can give it, and that includes finding and aiding surviving Jedi. But I would not ask you to take up your lightsaber, if you are unwilling.”

“Then a compromise, I think, we have.” He looks at her, wizened and canny, but for once she does not feel the weight of his age against hers. “To Dagobah, I will go. And with me, the twins will come.”

Padmé freezes, and notes the subtle shift of Dormé and Sabé by her side, their hands moving instinctively to blasters and daggers. “No,” she says, cold again, “they will not. I have lost my husband. I will not lose my children.”

“Your choice, this is not,” Yoda says stiffly, but now Bail jumps in.

“Senator Amidala cannot return to the public sphere,” he says reasonably. “She will therefore have to go into hiding. Why in the galaxy should she be separated from her children? They’re not even a day old!”

“Too strong, they are, to go unseen by the Emperor. Find them, he will, if together, you are,” Yoda says grimly.

Padmé looks to Obi-Wan, for a second desperate to have Anakin with her, to back up her words with his blade in the service of their family. They had discussed this, of course they had, once Anakin had calmed down from his exhilaration enough to start panicking, and he was adamant that their child would not be taken to the Temple.

“Master Yoda is right,” Obi-Wan says eventually, “in that the twins are too powerful in the Force to be brought into the Core. It would be possible, I think, to detect them from planetary orbit, if the seeker were familiar with Anakin’s signature, and we know that Sidious is. But I see no reason they should be separated from their mother.”

Yoda regards Obi-Wan with deep disappointment. “Become Jedi, the children must. The Jedi way, they must know.”

Obi-Wan quiets, and then says with soft vehemence, “Over my dead body.”

The five of them stare at him, universally shocked, but Padmé and her handmaidens relax slightly. 

“We failed Anakin,” Obi-Wan says: fierce and anguished, heartbreak scarring his expression. “We _failed_ him. We must not fail his children. They must be allowed to stay with their mother.”

“Unclear, your mind is, Obi-Wan,” Yoda reproves. “The reason Skywalker fell, she is.”

Except for the faint hiss of circulating air, the room is silent as space. The breath stills in Padmé's chest; Sabé presses her hand to Padmé's, a quick warm gesture of solidarity.

“Anakin fell for many reasons,” Obi-Wan says quietly. “Many of which, I suspect, only he knows. But it was his choice to go to Palpatine for aid, and it is our fault that he felt he could not go to us.” He rises, pulling his cloak more closely around his shoulders; he looks so tired, so small. “Senators,” he says, “my apologies, but I fear I must retire for a while. Rest assured, you have my complete support in your rebellion.”

“Thank you, Master Kenobi,” Bail murmurs, as Obi-Wan leaves, and then glances between Yoda and Padmé, Sabé, and Dormé, and the twins held close and safe in their arms. “We will continue this later, when Master Kenobi is rested,” he says, authoritative, “but you should know, Master Yoda, that I will support Senator Amidala in her decisions regarding her children. And Padmé — find me in the comm center when you're ready. There is work to be done.” He leaves the room with a quiet slide of the door, and then it is just Padmé and her family and Yoda.

Yoda sighs, heavily. “Your choice, this may be,” he says to Padmé, displeasure roiling through his tone like plasma through Naboo’s core. “But on Dagobah, safest they will be, until learn to hide themselves, they do. See this, Obi-Wan will, when rested, he has.”

“That may be,” Padmé says softly, “and their safety is everything to me; but I will not be taken from them. Luke and Leia are my children, my bone and blood.” She looks at him speculatively. 

“Master Yoda,” she asks, “are you familiar with the family stories of my children's ancestors?”

He says nothing; his silence confesses ignorance.

“Among the Naboo,” Padmé says, “we are connected by water. Water ties one continent to another, it traverses our planet’s core; it surrounds us and binds us. It shapes us and moves with us and endures us. Our waters knew the first of our people, and they will know the last. And Tatooine is much the same. When slaves have no other family, they have their desert for a mother.”

She rises, Sabé and Dormé instantly standing at her side. “There is strength in that binding,” she says. “There is perspective in that history, and compassion won from both the waters and the desert. My children will know their heritage, and the knowing will not condemn them.”

With that, she takes Luke from Sabé's arms, and sweeps out, Leia and her handmaidens just a breath behind her.

 

 

Bail is just wrapping up his comm to Queen Breha of Alderaan when they arrive, and Padmé takes a moment to extend her greetings and courtesy to the Queen; there is little more she can do before speaking to her own monarch. 

Before she can comm Apailana, though, Bail touches her elbow, a light contact to say _a moment, a word._

“Padmé,” he says, quiet and as serious as she has ever seen him, “know that I will support your family as far as it is possible for me to do so. But we are short of friends, now more than ever, and Master Yoda is not one we can afford to lose. Especially not if we hope to work with the Jedi against the Empire.”

She pauses, allowing his words the weight they demand as they settle on her shoulders. “You are right, Bail,” she says quietly, “and I will extend my friendship to Master Yoda as soon as I have briefed the Queen. You have my word.”

He squeezes her arm in gentle acknowledgement, and slips away, leaving her with Dormé and Sabé and the twins.

“My lady,” Dormé says demurely, “we will need to work out a rotation of labor amongst us, if we are to ensure your safety and that of the children. But for now, Sabé is the stronger fighter, so I will wait outside and ensure that you are interrupted neither by Jedi nor hungry infants.”

Padmé's heart swells. She brushes a kiss to Dormé's cheek, and to the brow of each of her twins, and then turns to the console.

“Sabé,” she says evenly, “I believe that the Emperor will be watching for my comm codes. Would you mind using your own?”

Sabé grins at her, teeth bright, a little feral. “Just like the old days, my lady?”

“Honestly, I would rather deal with a thousand Nute Gunrays than a tyrannical Palpatine,” Padmé replies; “but, yes.”

 

 

It's a few minutes before the comm goes through, and another few before Lyseé, the handmaiden who answered them in Theed’s Royal Palace, locates the Queen and transfers them. 

“Senator Amidala,” Queen Apailana says gravely, but relief bends the stern woad lines of queenly mourning on her face. “We feared the worst.”

“I am safe, Your Highness,” Padmé says steadily, bowing before her. “But I fear the worst has come to the Republic.”

“We have heard many things,” Apailana says. The pearls of her headdress sway gently in the blue holocomm. “Tell us what has befallen the Galaxy, Senator.”

As concisely as she can, she does: Palpatine’s coup, the slaughter of the Jedi, the betrayal of Anakin Skywalker, Hero of Naboo.

Here, she pauses, and says, “Your Highness, there is something I must confess to you, where I have been remiss in my duties to you.”

Apailana watches her gravely, but there's kindness beyond the white face paint, the heaviness of her crown. “Senator, you have served me well, and Queen Jamillia before me, and our people before her. Always you have fought fiercely for Naboo and for the Republic. If you have failed anyone, I suspect it is only yourself, for I have found no fault in your service of the last fourteen years.”

The words burn at her eyes, but she does not cry, does not reach to wipe them.

Gently, Apailana says, “Is this confession the cause of your mourning, Senator?”

The woad tears on her cheeks, nowhere near as elaborate as the Queen’s, are the same in essence. “Yes, Your Highness,” Padmé says softly. “Your Highness, Anakin Skywalker was my husband. And just yesterday I bore his children.”

For a moment, Apailana says nothing; when she speaks again, it is with absolute compassion. “Anakin Skywalker was a hero to our people,” she says. “He saved our planet from invasion. The Hero Without Fear brought hope to many throughout the Galaxy, Padmé, and there is no shame in loving him for that.”

Thickly, Padmé says, “When I discovered what he had done — that he had led the attack on the Jedi Temple — I killed him.”

“There is no shame in that, either,” Apailana says gently. “In seeking to protect your children, your planet, your galaxy. And you may feel as conflicted as you like about it, but if you are looking for judgment, for punishment, you will find none from me. There is more important work to be done.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Padmé says.

“I will work with the Royal Naboo fleets to coordinate quiet rescue missions for missing Jedi. Perhaps you can elicit a list of possible locations from your Jedi Masters. And we shall declare you missing, Padmé. There can be no communication between us, not even through Sabé. Send coordinates when you are safe, and I shall dispatch a team to support you and provide a more secure channel. Naboo will fully support your alliance to restore the Republic, even if we cannot do so publicly.”

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Padmé says, light-headed with relief.

Apailana smiles, quick and sly and bright. “May the waters see you back to Naboo again, Amidala,” she says. “Until then, you have my complete trust to represent Naboo to our allies. And, if you have not already chosen a name? I do quite like the sound of ‘Alliance to Restore the Republic’.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know all we saw of apailana was like three seconds in padmé's funeral but it was Enough and i am In Love


	3. three: ahsoka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ahsoka lunges for it, the Force at her fingertips, battle-honed instinct warning her not to let this give her away. The cylinder flies into her hand, the feel and heft of it familiar against her palm. She turns it over, seeing clearly despite the dark — Togruta night vision has always been better than human — and freezes.
> 
> It’s a lightsaber. And despite the fact that she’s never held this one in her hand, she knows it, has fought alongside it, has been trained by its wielder. 
> 
> This is Mace Windu’s lightsaber.

Ahsoka forces herself to wait three hours after the Force starts screaming before running to the Temple. Across the galaxy, she senses her friends, her teachers, her family winking out of existence like a star going supernova: they are there, as they have always been, and then for one shining moment they burn brilliantly, and then, suddenly, they are gone. Master Mundi, Master Plo, Jocasta Nu, the bright and beautiful younglings she'd shepherded to Ilum and back: gone, gone, gone, and the Force screams with it like a man losing his limbs, and then, raggedly, whispers _run, ahsoka, run._

So she runs. She flees the cramped and lightless studio she'd rented after leaving the Order, and moves carefully and quickly through the levels of Coruscant. She'd managed to evade the Jedi the last time they'd hunted for her, and Anakin —

Her sense of him blisters, raw and anguished; and then he, too, is gone.

Ahsoka claps her hands over her mouth to hold in the wail of grief aching to tear free of her, and exhales, a high thin whine edging her breath. Desperate, she pulls herself inward, yanking every gentle extended tendril of her consciousness out of the Force, out of the outside, out of the galaxy, and shuts herself in. Doing otherwise hurts too much.

For an hour or so, she stays like that, knees pulled to chest, rocking herself back against the grimy wall of the vent in which she's hidden herself. And then, the Force, like a summer breeze on her skin: _now, daughter._

Shivering, Ahsoka pulls herself up and out of the vent, stumbling out into the blue-black hours of morning stained by Coruscant’s light pollution. There’s a brief firm pressure at her elbow, a sense of direction, and she turns, obedient to this new instinct. _turn,_ she feels, and _stop; now go; on the repulsorcraft; now off; do not run._ Each directive, she obeys, slipping just out of sight as a clone patrol rounds the corner, helmets on and blasters raised. But miraculously, they do not notice her; Ahsoka moves unchallenged through the city, winding closer and closer to the surface and, eventually, to the Senate district.

At this, she hesitates, logic telling her to get as far from the Senate as possible, to get off-planet, to run and not stop until she’s made either the Outer Rim or Wild Space. But that Force-driven instinct nudges her forward, and it hasn’t betrayed her yet. 

There are more clone troopers around the Senate building, which isn’t surprising, but Ahsoka manages to avoid them, swinging up into rafters and catwalks to stay off the main walkways and steps, body moving in concert with that guiding pressure. After a kilometre or so, barely a fraction around the Senate’s circumference, the Force directs her _down, keep going until you know to stop._

So she descends into the Coruscanti underbelly, light on her feet, hood pulled up over her montrals. Now the Force is silent, irritatingly; Ahsoka intensely dislikes having been led to the sarlacc’s maw only to be abandoned as it probes up for her, but she is, in a way that is not political or religious, in a way that goes deeper than species or gender, Jedi. The Force is a part of her, even when it does not speak to her directly, and usually, that’s the way she likes it. She never envied Anakin his visions. 

She keeps going, moving silently across pourstone and durasteel, dropping from one level to another, listening intently for any sign of surveillance or shadows, and for nearly twenty minutes there’s only the faint rustle of vermin or a steady drip of sewer water from a leaking pipe. And then, her foot catches on something, and Ahsoka stumbles, steadying herself instinctively, as a thin silver cylinder rolls toward the edge of the walkway.

Ahsoka lunges for it, the Force at her fingertips, battle-honed instinct warning her not to let this give her away. The cylinder flies into her hand, the feel and heft of it familiar against her palm. She turns it over, seeing clearly despite the dark — Togruta night vision has always been better than human — and freezes.

It’s a lightsaber. And despite the fact that she’s never held this one in her hand, she _knows_ it, has fought alongside it, has been trained by its wielder. 

This is Mace Windu’s lightsaber.

Suddenly she understands why the Force prodded her toward the Senate. Or — she thinks she does. It would not have sent her here merely for a lightsaber, though she clips it to her belt anyways — waste not, want not — because if necessary she can build her own, and what more harm could possibly come from leaving one more lightsaber for the Jedi-killers to find?

No. The Force sent her here because Mace Windu is still alive, and he needs her help.

His distrust of her, of her master, his complicity in that nightmarish mockery of due process that was her treason trial, none of that matters anymore. The Jedi are being hunted down and murdered. Each surviving member of the Order is infinitely precious. 

Poised on the walkway’s safety rail, Ahsoka cautiously extends her awareness, careful to hide herself as much as possible, searching for any trace of a familiar being. And then, further down, she senses him. 

“Got you,” she whispers, and jumps.

 

 

Lifting and carrying a barely-conscious, grievously wounded human approximately twice her size isn't easy, generally, even with Togruta endurance and the Force lending her strength. But combined with the desperate need for stealth and an unknown destination, it's downright miserable. 

One of the first things Anakin had taught her as his padawan was that the things they would do would be inescapably, irrefutably miserable. They were warriors; this was war. That was simply the way of things. “But,” he'd said, elbowing her lightly, an offer of camaraderie, “that doesn't mean that _we_ have to be miserable, Snips.” Take your joy where you can find it, Anakin had told her. Trust in the Force. 

Now, in the dank cavern of Coruscant's underworld, Ahsoka heaves Mace across her narrow shoulders. “Thanks, Skyguy,” she whispers, and reaches for that luminous instinct in the Force. _You brought me here to find him,_ she thinks fiercely. _That won’t be worth a thing if I can’t get him out of here._

 _Trust in the Force, Snips._ She wants to cry. Later, there’ll be time for tears. But not now. Not while in enemy territory.

Mace’s weight, at least, is comforting; she couldn’t forget that she’s not alone out here if she tried.

 

 

 _Trust in the Force_ is a very nice platitude, but Ahsoka’s seriously starting to doubt when the Force nudges her toward the Jedi Temple.

 _Are you crazy?_ she thinks incredulously at it. _They will absolutely be waiting for us!_ And, as they get closer and she begins to sense what happened in the Temple: _no, no — I can’t go in there no no no nononono —_

But the Force is insistent, as Ahsoka’s never known it to be, and it brought her to Mace, and there is nothing of the obliterating cold of the Dark Side around what urges her forward, of that she’s certain. So she obeys, even if logic screams at her not to, and follows it down through construction tunnels and side streets until she arrives at an entrance she would know in her sleep.

It’s a waste tunnel, a kriffing nightmare of sewage and whatnot, but Anakin had shown it to her on one of their rare returns to the planet. “Even Obi-Wan doesn't know,” he'd confided, sly and pleased, “but I used to sneak out through here to speeder races in the lower city. It's not fun, but if you need an exit, it does the job.”

Obi-Wan, long-suffering, had sighed when he'd seen her in the street, still reeking faintly of garbage despite a change of clothes and quick antiseptic wipe down. “I take it Anakin showed you his secret tunnel,” he'd said drily; “don't worry, I won't tell. He enjoys the secret of it far too much.”

Now, Ahsoka stares up at it grimly. It's not ideal, especially not for Mace, who's badly wounded, but the apparent cauterization on his arm should help, and the stench, at least, might wake him up enough to be useful. 

Carefully, she rips off a length of his tunic and secures it around his stump, in what is likely an already-failed effort to protect it from infection, but she's no healer; some days, Ahsoka feels like she can barely keep herself alive.

That done, she grits her teeth, spins the sewage tunnel's access port open, and pulls on the Force with everything she's got.

After that, it's easy.

 

 

Inside the Temple is a nightmare. She gets in, and crumples, unable to do much but soften the impact of Mace's head on the tiled floor as the horror of the slaughtered shockwaves toward her. The younglings. The Jedi. Jocasta Nu and her charges. It washes over her brutally, uncompromising, and she — 

_Anakin died in this fight,_ she thinks, in the broad galactic blow of it. For his sake, she will bear it.

So Ahsoka opens herself for it, lets herself feel every agonizing second of it, the fear, the pain, the anger, the grief. For a long moment, she is not herself: she is everyone who died, her body their body, her mind a thousand minds. And then, it is over, leeching away like regret, like a shadow under a speeder’s light. She gasps, and falls forward, catching herself with a hand outstretched.

It is not better. Sitting there, settling back into herself, Ahsoka knows it will never be any better. But she is Jedi, and this is the Temple, and she bore witness to its greatest suffering. The wound is still there, but its edges are less ragged. The anguish is bearable.

Beside her, Mace stirs, and stills. She clambers back to him, feeling wildly, clumsily, for a pulse, listening for the rasp of his breath. He is alive, but barely, and in a way she does not know how to address. She pulls him to the medbay, and settles him on a bed, and performs a medical scan with shaking hands. She sets up an intravenous line to keep him nourished. An oxygen mask to ensure he does not drown, that his lungs will not fail him in her absence. 

Ahsoka collapses on one of the low benches in the infirmary, running her hand along the tips of her montrals, the tails of her lekku. It is clear what she must do, and the Force moves around her in affirmation. 

Well. She's long overdue for a conversation with Barriss. Might as well get on with it.

 

 

If asked later how she broke into the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Centre's top secret, highest security solitary confinement cell, Ahsoka would shrug, smile mysteriously (she's _allowed),_ and simply say, “The Force guided me.”

This is the truth. 

Another, somewhat less mysterious answer, is that Ahsoka was trained very, very well by an individual most gifted in doing things he was not supposed to do, and that she can fit into even smaller spaces than he could.

This is also the truth.

The Force guides her through the labyrinthine centre, slowing her to avoid a patrol and speeding her to evade another. It tells her where to turn, when to go up and down, left and right, until she drops, graceful as a Loth-cat, to the aisle facing Barriss Offee’s cell.

Her hands tremble. Ahsoka exhales, and stills them. She reaches for the activation lock next to the door, and presses it.

With a hiss of hydraulics, the door springs open. In the middle of the cell, sitting cross-legged in meditation, Barriss opens her eyes.

“Oh,” Barriss says. Her voice is raspy, dry; there are deep purple bruises under her eyes, on the bone of her cheek. The posture of her weapon arm is stiff, slightly unnatural. “It's you.”

“Yes,” Ahsoka says, heart in her throat. “It's me.”

Barriss sighs. “I'm getting rather tired of this,” she says, stony and cold. “Do it.”

“It?”

Barriss' eyes glitter. “You're here to kill me. You're always here to kill me.”

Ahsoka swallows. “I — no. I’m here to rescue you.”

“Don't _lie_ to me,” Barriss snarls, and suddenly she's only a breath away from Ahsoka, close enough to kiss, Ahsoka thinks, a little hysterical, close enough to feel the heat of Barriss' body on her skin. “Every time, you come here, you kill me, just get on with it—”

“Barriss,” Ahsoka whispers, and clears her throat. “I — we're going to have to talk about this every time thing because I swear, this is the first time I've been here, but — I'm not here to kill you. I need your help. Please.”

For a few seconds, Barriss is stone-still and silent; then, roughly, she clears her throat. “Let's go.”

 

 

Barriss can't climb. This much is immediately obvious as soon as Ahsoka leaps for the ventilation shaft and Barriss makes no attempt to follow, staring at her sardonically from the ground. They cannot simply walk out, either; there is no cause for Barriss to be transferred, especially not without documentation in triplicate, and neither she nor Ahsoka can easily don a guard’s uniform intended for a human male, with Barriss’ arm and Ahsoka’s montrals. 

So Ahsoka swallows, and drops back down next to her. “I need you to trust me,” she says.

Barriss raises a brow, her mouth pursed in a cruel moue of disbelief. 

“Trust, at least, that I need you alive and that I need it desperately enough to have risked my own freedom and the life of another to free you,” Ahsoka says.

Barriss says nothing. Her eyes burn dark in her face.

“If I lift you,” Ahsoka says, “can you get into the vent and crawl?”

“I was a Knight, padawan,” Barriss says coldly, but stands where Ahsoka indicates, and manoeuvres herself into the vent shaft as Ahsoka strains to lift her with the Force. 

Ahsoka leaps up after her, and secures the vent grate behind them. Barriss watches her, eyes glittering.

“You were not so strong in the Force the last time we met, Ahsoka,” she says.

The tips of her montrals prickle in instinctual discomfort. “A lot's changed since then.”

Barriss inclines her head in silent acknowledgement. “After you,” she says.

Careful, cautious, quiet, Ahsoka leads the way.

 

 

Barriss follows her without question or complaint through the Centre’s ventilation shafts, past shifting patrols of clone-masked guards, out of the prison and into Coruscant’s luminescent smog. Her nostrils flare, but Barriss says nothing, and she wears her silence like a cloak until they reach the outskirts of the Temple district. There, she stills, frozen, for a long moment, and Ahsoka stops with her, lets her prepare herself.

“It doesn’t get easier,” Ahsoka says quietly. “It doesn’t. But we have to keep going.”

“No,” Barriss says tightly, her posture rigid and inflexible as stone. “No. I won’t—”

“You have to,” Ahsoka whispers, reaching tentatively to touch Barriss’ shoulder. “We can’t risk staying out of the open. But”— is she only now understanding the reasons the Force had in bringing her to the Temple? —“the echoes of the violence will shield us more thoroughly than we could hope to do ourselves."

Barriss turns abruptly, pressing to Ahsoka's body with a desperation Ahsoka recognizes. How fiercely she would have clung to a familiar, friendly face in the aftermath — she would have flung herself into Anakin’s arms, or Obi-Wan’s, or Master Plo’s or Master Luminara's or even, kriff it, Mace Windu’s, had he been conscious when she found him. And so Ahsoka, with a calm she did not realize she could feel, returns Barriss' embrace, holding her tightly but careful of her wounded arm, withstanding the way her thin frame shakes against Ahsoka’s own body.

It is not alright. It will do neither of them any good to pretend otherwise. But in this moment, the rift between them closes, a paper cut to the gruesome amputation of the slaughtered Jedi.

They are among the last. They may be the last Jedi. If they cannot work together — if they cannot trust each other, if they cannot prize the lives and abilities they each have, then they will die as surely as their forebears. 

Another moment passes, and Barriss eases in her arms, wiping a hand quickly beneath her eyes as she pulls away. “Let us continue.”

Ahsoka breathes deep, and leads the way.

 

 

Barriss, predictably displeased with their mode of entry, collapses to the tiled floor of the Temple as soon as they are inside. Though she’s worried for Mace, Ahsoka can’t bring herself to leave Barriss to the onslaught of trauma intrenched in the Temple, and holds her, and makes soft soothing nonsense sounds until Barriss comes out of it, staggering to her feet. 

“You said," Barriss says raggedly, striving for composure, “you needed my help.”

Wordlessly, Ahsoka leads her to the medbay. At the sight of Mace Windu, unevenly breathing, unconscious but still alive, Barriss freezes again, her face impassive and, in the cold pale light of the room, bruise-marred and vulnerable. 

“Ah," she says softly. 

Ahsoka opens her mouth — to bargain, to reason, to beg — but Barriss merely moves to the sanitizer, cleans her hands as best she can, and, with the first real display of Force-sensitivity since Ahsoka opened her cell door, waves a series of medical tools and accoutrements onto an operating table by Mace. 

“This will take a while," Barriss says brusquely over her shoulder. “You may as well get comfortable, Ahsoka.”

“Your arm —” Ahsoka starts, but Barriss shakes her head.

"It will keep. It has for this long. Master Windu is the more pressing concern. And I doubt that I will long outlive my usefulness.”

Ahsoka freezes. “Barriss—”

“I think,” Barriss says softly, “even if this is real, it will not be up to you. But I am grateful to have seen you without violence between us. I have missed you.”

Her lungs are stagnant, useless. Helplessly, Ahsoka says, “Barriss.”

“It is no matter.” Barriss doesn’t meet her eyes. “You should rest, Ahsoka. I will tell you when he wakes.”

Feeling small, and exhausted and useless and scared, Ahsoka curls on a medical cot at the wall, facing Barriss, facing Mace. Her heart is a black hole. At its centre, Barriss flickers like a star, like gravity, like entropy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things i am demonstrably incapable of doing:  
> \- writing stories that actually resemble a cohesive narrative instead of one of those greek pottery pieces smashed by a vindictive toddler  
> \- dealing with any kind of heterosexuality  
> \- action sequences?????  
> \- resisting flattery it DOES get you everywhere
> 
> in other news! end of the semester is approaching, familial obligations are approaching, work obligations are approaching, so pls do not despair overmuch if this languishes through august. i'm hoping to get up at least one update by the end of the month, but what you see here is literally as much as i've written to date. 
> 
> nevertheless, i hope you enjoyed this installment! drop a line and tell me what movies you've seen/enjoyed/are anticipating this summer! i'm going to see ghostbusters with a friend next week and i can't wait for suicide squad :)


	4. four: padmé

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "First," Padmé begins, "I must tell you how much your loyalty, your service, your friendship means to me. You have saved me a hundred times over. You have carried my life as yours with all of the risks and few of the rewards. But from now on, that must change."

Padmé steps out of the comm room and takes Leia back in her arms. “Any news, Dormé?”

Dormé passes Luke to Sabé and stretches her arms. “Very little, milady. Master Yoda stopped by and attempted to convince me to leave the twins in his custody, which of course I refused. And Master Kenobi requested to speak to you at your leisure.”

“The droids?”

“Artoo-Deetoo is supervising service to your ship, milady, and See-Threepio is being fitted with additional security protocols.”

“Senator Organa? And the Delegation?”

“Senator Organa is speaking to the Kallidahin, milady. He said to tell you he would speak to you this evening regarding the next step.”

“Dormé,” Padmé says, “I am deeply indebted to you for your loyalty. To both of you.” She turns, and faces each of them. “We need to talk, the three of us.”

“And I think this little one needs to be fed,” Sabé says softly. “To the medbay?”

“Yes,” Padmé says decisively.

In the medbay, Sabé feeding Luke from the bottle they’d prepared that morning and Padmé having pulled back her capelet and unbuttoned her bodice to nurse Leia, Padmé begins to talk.

“First,” she begins, “I must tell you how much your loyalty, your service, your friendship means to me. You have saved me a hundred times over. You have carried my life as yours with all of the risks and few of the rewards. But from now on, that must change. I am about to join an active political — and, I expect, military — resistance to the most dangerous leader in modern galactic history.”

She pauses, and holds each of their gazes in turn. “In light of this, I absolve you of any duty to me. You have no obligations to me, nor any to my children. If you wish to leave, to return to Naboo or elsewhere, I will do everything in my power to see you settled safely and I will wish you every happiness, and hope that the waters lead us together again in more peaceful times. This choice is yours.”

Sabé and Dormé exchange glances. “Milady,” Sabé says fiercely, “only death could keep me from your side.”

“The same goes for me, milady,” Dormé says, softer but no less intent than Sabé. 

Impulsive, Padmé reaches for each of them in turn, clasping their hands with a welling gratitude. “Thank you,” she says warmly, blinking away a tear. “I — thank you.”

For a moment they sit in a silence broken only by the gurgle of Luke’s bottle, the unfocused rustle of Leia’s tiny hand in Padmé’s clothes. And then, Padmé says, her love for these women unsteadying her voice, “Then we have a few things to organize. No more titles between us. No more rank. We are friends and comrades in this fight. Equals. We will share our skills and responsibilities among the three of us, and among Threepio so far as is possible.”

“And the astromech?” Sabé inquires.

“I suspect that Artoo will elect to follow Obi-Wan, wherever he chooses to go,” Padmé says quietly. “My hope is that he will remain with us, and that Captain Typho, Rabé, and Moteé will join us as soon as they are able under the same agreement of equality to which we have just agreed.”

“Padmé,” Dormé says, the name tripping unfamiliarly from her mouth, “what is it you hope to contribute to this effort?”

“I think that is a question we must all answer,” Padmé says. “There are many things that must be done. There is the matter of the surviving Jedi. There is the political organization of the Delegation and the Alliance. And there is the matter of recruitment and diplomacy in the Mid and Outer Rims.”

“You haven't mentioned the military,” Sabé notes drily. 

“I haven't,” Padmé agrees. “I do not believe that I, personally, can contribute much to the commanding of armies. My strengths, as you both know, lie in diplomacy. And a battlefield is no place for children.”

“There is that to consider.” Dormé eyes the twins speculatively. “I do not trust Master Yoda with custody of the children, and I would sooner lose my life than see them parted from you unwillingly, but I confess to being uneasy with the danger to which we will expose them.”

Silence falls, soft and weightless as a silk veil, and Padmé looks down at Leia’s scrunched, chubby cheeks, the spittle on her breast. She looks at Luke, his tiny toes flexing just beyond the drape of his blanket, his blue eyes sleepy, and —

It’s foolish, to have seen and endured what she has and remain a sceptic, but something in Padmé has always doubted, in an indulgent kind of way, the real power of the Force. It is something she cannot touch, cannot quantify, can only experience through the manipulation of others, and she hates, has always hated, having to rely on second-hand accounts. It is foolish almost to the point of willful ignorance, determined stupidity, but it is her nature to doubt that for which there is no precisely empirical evidence.

And yet, she looks at her children, her star-born babes, and feels for them, not as she loves her nieces, but as though she cradles their hearts in hers, as though she can feel Leia’s sleepy recognition, Luke’s drowsy contentment against her skin. Anakin was strong in the Force, and her children are, as well, and for the first time Padmé wonders if some of that sensitivity lingers in her from her pregnancy.

“The last thing,” Padmé says softly, “that I want is to endanger my children. But I will not be parted from them, and the sooner we begin our work, the sooner the galaxy will be safe for them.”

“It’s settled, then,” Dormé says, relief in her words. “The five of us will stay together.”

Padmé reaches the hand not cradling Leia to Dormé's and squeezes warmly. “I wouldn't have it any other way.”

 

 

Later, in the suite of rooms the Kallidahin have allotted the five of them, there’s a knock at the door. Padmé turns, curious, the twins dozing in a crib at the end of the bed.

Sabé slides the door halfway open. “Master Kenobi is asking if you have a moment, Padmé.”

She sets down her datapad. “I do.”

Sabé opens the door fully and steps back to allow Obi-Wan into the room. He ducks as he enters, from deference or habit or discomfort; she doesn't know. He scans the room in the instinctive way she recognizes from Anakin during the war, taking in the datapad, the open case of clothes and cosmetics, the crib and its sleeping infants.

“They are very quiet children,” he observes, and some of the tension in the room vanishes.

Padmé laughs. “They are. I’m sure it won't last, but as long as it does, I’m grateful.”

Obi-Wan nods. Quiet settles into the room, but Padmé can wait. She’s a politician.

Abruptly, he says, “You will be working in the rebellion. Won't you?”

She looks at him, trying to gauge his interest. “Yes.”

He shifts as though he wants to pace, but doesn't, as though the inclination embarrasses him. “I understand if you do not accept this, Senator, but I — I want to join you. To follow you. I know there is a breach of trust between us, and I know you may resent me and the Order, but I can help you. I can protect you and shield your children, I can assist your negotiations and whatever else it is you intend to do. I can help you, Senator.”

She goes to him in two quick steps, takes his hands in hers, and waits for him to meet her gaze. “Obi-Wan. Of course you may join us.”

He looks at her, searching. Padmé swallows. “I do not pretend that it will be easy,” she says. “I do not pretend to be easy with Master Yoda or with the philosophies of the Jedi. But you were Anakin's best friend, and you have been a good friend to me since we met, and I will never be your enemy. Let us be friends.”

His hands tighten on hers impulsively before he releases his grip. “Thank you, milady.”

“There’s one more thing,” she says. “The same pledge I made to Sabé and Dormé, I make to you. We will hold no rank between us. We will share our labour and responsibilities equally. And if you wish to leave, for any reason, you have no obligation to stay.”

“Thank you, Padmé,” Obi-Wan says quietly. He hesitates for a moment, and then speaks. “I know that my teaching record is far from perfect, but, I would like to teach the twins the ways of the Force.”

Something must show in her expression, because he quickly adds, “Not immediately. And of course, I will make every effort to avoid the mistakes I made in Anakin’s training.”

“No,” Padmé says quickly, her hand to his shoulder. “No, please — of course, they must be trained. I would not have that legacy kept from them. But — Obi-Wan, please, you must not blame yourself—”

“But I must,” he interrupts. “Anakin did not randomly turn to the Dark Side. I must have contributed to his fall somehow. And unless I recognize and take responsibility for my failures, I am unfit to train your children.”

She touches his cheek, a tenderness she can’t explain, except in that he is softly, terribly sad, and his sorrow is her own in a way that none else share. For both of them, Anakin was the most important person in their lives. His loss is a wound, an abysm of hurt they will carry to their deaths. 

“I would trust no one else to their training,” Padmé says gently. “No one, Obi-Wan. Understand me.”

He shivers under her fingertips, eyes closed in grief or gratitude.

“There’s one more thing,” Obi-Wan says after a moment, pulling away from her touch. His eyes blink open, that pale green clear in the white light of the room. 

“Yes?”

“Ahsoka,” he says, and the bottom of her stomach drops out. In the panicked afterbirth of the Empire, she had completely forgotten. For a single blinding second, Padmé is consumed utterly by doubt: how can she hope to make a difference if she cannot save the girl she loves like a daughter? If she cannot remember those most important to her — but she had let Ahsoka drift away, had not reached out after that first awkward call to help her find an apartment. It was her fault. And then, worse, self-loathing. How _dare_ she turn Ahsoka’s plight and uncertainty back on herself? This is not about her. None of this is about her. 

“Ahsoka,” Padmé breathes. “Ancestors.”

“I want to find her,” Obi-Wan says.

 _“Yes,”_ Padmé says instantly, “yes, of course, you must — what can I do to help?”

He looks over her shoulder to where the twins curl together like parentheses, like bodies in orbit to each other. “I will not leave you,” he says. “The risk, I think, is too great. Having lost Anakin, Sidious will be searching for replacements, and the temptation of the twins — it is unthinkable. But your allies on Coruscant?”

“They will be under close scrutiny,” Padmé says, and then reconsiders. She goes to the door and opens it.

“Dormé,” she says. Dormé looks up from her datapad, a question in her eyes. “Do you have a moment?”

 

 

Dormé listens to them carefully, her expression still and considering. At last, she says, “Yes. Do not fear, mil— Padmé. If she lives, I will find her.”

Padmé pulls her close, kisses her cheek. “Thank you, Dormé.” There’s a thin smudge of gold on Dormé's skin from Padmé’s scar of remembrance, and she touches it gently. 

Taking a deep breath, Dormé squares her thin shoulders. “I will await you where the waters begin, Padmé.”

“The tides will reunite us,” Padmé says softly, the coded response falling from her lips like tears. How strange, to have been removed from the Royal Palace for so long, to have luxuriated in that removal as a representative of the Republic, and to wear Naboo’s emblems of queendom now that she is barred from her home. 

Obi-Wan waits until Dormé has slipped from the room before speaking, apparently unwilling to question her judgement or authority before the others.

“Padmé,” he says, “may I ask what it is that just occurred?”

Padmé turns back to the bed, picks up her datapad, and sets it down again restlessly. She wants something to do with her hands. The tell embarrasses her.

“Dormé will find Ahsoka, and then we will meet them,” she says. In the crib, Luke fusses a moment, and she lifts him into the cradle of her arms, pressing her nose to the clean, milk-sweet scent at the crown of his fragile pink head. 

Delicately, Obi-Wan says, “But how exactly will she do that?”

Padmé looks at him, evaluative, taking his measure and her own, wondering at her hesitance. At last, she says, “Dormé was my handmaiden.”

“I remember,” he says cautiously.

“She served me through my terms as Queen and until the Clone Wars during my Senate terms,” Padmé says. She wills him to put the pieces together.

Obi-Wan looks at her patiently, waiting. 

She gives up. “After the outbreak of the Clone Wars, Dormé was recalled to Naboo, and I was served by Teckla, whom you met, until her death; and then, Queen Apailana sent Moteé and Rabé to attend me in Coruscant.”

“They also served you as Queen,” Obi-Wan says slowly. “Why the gaps in service?”

Luke gurgles in her arms, and she shushes him softly. He blinks at her, solemn, and fidgets in her arm to look at Obi-Wan, and then to look back to her.

Carefully, Padmé considers her options. “Do not think that I do not answer out of distrust, Obi-Wan,” she says. “But these are not my secrets to tell. Just — please believe me when I say that there is no one I trust more to discover Ahsoka.”

His eyes are bright, calculating, as he appraises her. “Not even Sabé?”

“Sabé — Sabé is too visible,” Padmé says. “She is too well known for her role in protecting me and defeating the Trade Federation during their invasion. But her fame, such that it is to the Naboo, allows my other handmaidens to live more discreetly.”

Understanding gleams in his gaze. “She's a spy.”

Padmé meets his eyes. “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

Obi-Wan smiles, worn, tired. “You do not have to,” he says. “I trust you.”

 

 

After Obi-Wan leaves, Padmé curls at the head of the bed, Luke a comforting weight in her arms. He stares at her, solemn and, she thinks, curious, before smiling at her unselfconsciously, his tiny hand searching the air for hers.

It’s silly, ascribing these motives and meanings to a child barely even a day old, but she can’t help it. He is her son, her bone and blood, and she loves him; she knows him. She eases down the bed with him, until she can settle closer to Leia as well, can caress the soft silky sweep of her daughter’s hair with her fingertips. 

This is how Sabé finds her, too soon and not soon enough.

“They are wondrous children, Padmé,” Sabé says quietly, settling beside her.

“They are,” Padmé agrees. Underneath her capelet, Luke suckles at her breast. “But I worry that I will not be a good mother to them. That I may prefer one over the other, that I will not be adept at splitting my time between the Republic and my children. Silly, isn't it, when there are so many worse things to fear.”

Sabé considers this for a few moments, her chin tucked down toward her collarbone. “It is not silly,” she says at last. “And I think that this worry proves that you will be a good mother to them, because you will always be aware of your own behaviour towards them. But perhaps it will ease your mind to think of it like this: your children are the Republic. They are its future. To neglect them is to neglect the Republic, and vice versa. And if there is one thing in this galaxy of which I am certain, it is that you will always do your duty.”

Padmé breathes out, a quick hurting exhale, and presses her brow to Sabé's shoulder. “I’ve missed you,” she whispers.

Sabé touches her cheeks, her long fine fingers light on the line of Padmé's jaw. “I will never leave you again,” she says tenderly.

For a time — Padmé does not know how long, nor does she care — they sit together on her bed, Sabé gathering Leia into her arms and producing a bottle of milk. 

“I am hopeful,” Sabé murmurs, “that I will begin to produce milk soon. We will be sure of no shortage, then.”

Padmé kisses her cheek. “Thank you,” she says.

 

 

Leaving the twins safe under Sabé's watchful care, Padmé goes to seek out Yoda. She had promised Bail, and while Dormé's report of Yoda’s latest attempt to steal her children did not endear him to her, they must not lose him to exile. He is too valuable for her personal disagreement with him to get in the way.

This is what she tells herself on the way. Were she still pregnant, it might have been easier, her singular child a terrifying abstract, a secret that would unravel the very foundations of her life. But her children are here, Luke and Leia, her bright younglings, and the thought that they could be taken from her is unconscionable, and she finds that she wants to act as Anakin might have if he were here.

That is never a good idea. 

She finds Yoda in the conference room, looking as though he hadn’t stirred since their argument in the morning. At his back, Padmé feels falsely comfortable in staring at him, wondering. The galaxy turns and he remains, shrivelled and stoic, watching as stars are born and empires fall. The thought reassures her.

“Senator,” he says, voice creaking in the quiet hum of the station. “To speak, you wish?”

Padmé steels herself and takes the chair opposite him. “Master Yoda. Yes. I wish to apologize for the heat of our earlier exchange.”

“True, that is not,” Yoda says disapprovingly.

She pauses, considers her words. “Perhaps I do not wish to,” she acknowledges, “but I gave my word that I would, and my personal desires are second to my duty.”

“If only earlier learned that lesson, you had,” Yoda says cuttingly.

She suppresses her instinctive flinch only out of years of practice. “Master Yoda,” she says, voice measured, “I do not wish for us to be adversaries. In the face of this new Empire, neither of us can afford to lose friends. But this desire must be mutual, if we wish to succeed. I cannot carry it alone.”

He hums, pensive, his green eyes intent on hers. “Enemies we are not, Senator,” he says at last. “But responsible for Skywalker’s fall, I hold you. Friends we cannot be, I think.”

“We do not need to be friends,” Padmé says with a calm she does not feel. “We just need to be able to work together.”

“Do that, we can,” Yoda says.

“Excellent.” Padmé stands and makes for the door, where she pauses and looks back. “And Master Yoda? Do not _ever_ go behind my back and try to steal my children again. Palpatine will be the least of your problems if you do.”

He says nothing, but she feels his ancient eyes between her shoulder blades as she exits.

 

 

She goes to find Bail next. 

He’s cloistered in another conference room adjacent to the comm centre, and Threepio is there with him.

“Miss Padmé!” Threepio cries in ecstatic relief, shuffling toward her. “How good it is to see you!”

“It’s good to see you, too, Threepio,” she says warmly. “Dormé mentioned you were installing new security protocols. Did that go well?”

“Of course, Miss Padmé,” he says, a little offended if she’s reading his tone right. “I am now equipped with cutting-edge counter-slicing software and an emergency wipe protocol in case my internal processors are breached without proper authorization, in addition to physical deterrents.”

“Excellent,” Padmé says feelingly. “I am very relieved to hear that, Threepio.” 

“If it’s alright, Miss Padmé, I think I would like to power down for a bit,” he says. 

“Of course. Why don't you return to our suite, and I will meet you there later.” She turns to Bail. “What news?”

“Little,” he says. “The Holonet is down.”

She freezes. “It’s — it’s down? How can it be down? It hasn't been down in centuries, it—” Understanding dawns.

“He shut it down,” she says. “The Emperor. He shut down the Holonet.”

“Yes,” Bail says grimly. “That is what we think, as well. It makes sense — it’s the logical move to make in his position.”

Padmé rubs at her brow anxiously. “Of course it makes sense,” she whispers, “just — people depend on the Holonet, to communicate with their families and loved ones, for their livelihood, for their rights, to know what’s happening in the kriffing galaxy—”

“Padmé,” Bail says, laying a firm hand on her shoulder, “I know. I know.”

She breathes. “Any word from any of the Delegation?”

He considers, and then gestures to two chairs. “Let’s sit.”

They sit. Padmé folds her hands in her lap and smooths her expression, the woad on her cheeks straight and solemn. Whatever is coming, she isn't going to like it. 

“Padmé,” Bail says seriously, “we need to discuss your role in this Alliance.”

She waits.

He settles in his seat, stares at her.

“Cut to the chase, Bail,” Padmé says.

“We don't want you to have an obvious role in the Alliance, Padmé,” he says baldly. 

She takes a breath. “It will never be safe, Bail, if that’s what worries you.”

“There are better times to take the risk,” Bail says. “Your children are not even two days old. You just gave _birth,_ Padmé, after suffering a severe emotional and physical trauma — we want you to stay as safe as possible right now. Palpatine knows you, Padmé. If he suspects you live, if he suspects anything — you are too valuable to us to risk so soon.”

“Then what do you propose?”

Bail leans forward, his warm brown eyes serious. “You will already be moving around the galaxy, and you will be going with Obi-Wan. I assume you are arranging for your handmaidens to join you?”

She says nothing, and waits. If he will not share information with her about the Alliance, she is within her rights to withhold her own operations from him. 

“In which case,” he says, clearly sensing her mood, “I think you should search for surviving Jedi.”

This catches her off-guard.

“This — _this_ is safer than rebel politics?” she asks incredulously. 

“Not as such,” he acknowledges. “But you have a unit of covert operatives and bodyguards at your disposal, a Force-user, and mobility. We do not have the infrastructure to spare, Padmé. It is almost beyond belief that we managed to meet here.”

Padmé swallows her instinctive indignation and gives his proposal the consideration he deserves. What he says is true, and in truth, it had been at the forefront of her mind already. It is foolish and, worse, selfish to hope that rescuing the survivors of Palpatine’s purge can atone for her role in it, however small that role may have been, but she hopes, and she can help. Dormé has already undertaken such a mission. Obi-Wan is naturally the most eager of them to find his brethren. And if they succeed — her children will be safer if there are more Jedi operating in the galaxy, more Jedi working to bring about an end to the Sith.

Padmé looks to Bail, and nods. “I think we have an agreement, Senator Organa.”

 

 

She meets Artoo on the way back to her suite. He whistles at her inquiringly.

“Yes,” she says. “Dormé was here. She left on a mission for me. Sabé is still here. She’s watching the children.” She pauses, thinking and then crouches before him. “Would you like to meet them?”

Artoo beeps excitedly, rapidly, and speeds down the hall.

“Wait up!” Padmé calls after him. “Don't ask me to run already, Artoo.”

He beeps apologetically, waiting for her at a turn in the hall. Together, they return to the suite.

“Threepio,” Padmé says upon entering, “could you come with us for a moment?”

The droid whirs back to awareness and moves toward her and Artoo. “Artoo! Where have you been! How could you abandon me on this asteroid?”

Artoo beeps back, impudent as ever, and Padmé smiles to herself as she leads the way back to her room.

Inside, Sabé is bent over the twins in their crib, watching them wide-eyed. When she looks up, her eyes have a shade of the wonder they’d held when she and Padmé had first met, when they had dressed each other in the Royal Naboo regalia and whispered conspiratorially, breaking into stifled giggles before they saw their reflections in the mirrors. Padmé reaches for her, and takes her hand. 

“I want the droids to meet the twins,” she says, and Sabé nods, settles Leia into her arms. 

“Artoo,” she whispers, as Leia grouses, irate at her rest being disturbed, “Threepio. This is Leia. And,” as Sabé joins her with Luke, “Luke. My children. My twins.”

“How very small they are, my lady,” Threepio says dutifully, and Artoo whistles in approval.

“My children,” Padmé says, swallowing around a lump in her throat, “are the most important beings in the galaxy to me. I ask that you join me in protecting them.”

Artoo immediately beeps the affirmative, barely waiting until she’s finished speaking; Threepio, ever more formal, says, “Why of course, Miss Padmé!”

She’s just resettled Leia in the crib, Artoo stationed in front of it as though prepared to attack any who approach, when the door slides open and Obi-Wan bursts in.

“Padmé,” he cries, barely pausing to nod to Sabé and the droids, “Come, quickly—”

Bewildered, she follows him to the suite’s main room, where a holoscreen is on.

“The Holonet’s back up?” she asks, confused.

But Obi-Wan shakes his head, pointing to the background of the screen, behind Palpatine’s cloaked death-head grin, and everything —

 

 

— stops —

 

 

Sabé has her arm, and Obi-Wan is trying to tell her something, and it’s important by the look on his face, but she can't hear him, can't hear anything. Her hands are numb. Distantly and with some surprise, she realizes she’s hyperventilating. 

Sabé is shouting at Obi-Wan, now, moving Padmé until she’s seated and unlikely to collapse painfully to the ground; and then Sabé is kneeling before her, holding her hands, fingers on her cheek, _look at me — breathe, my love —_

There are tears on her face. One drips from her chin to the knuckle of her thumb. She stares at the damp gleam of it, and then abruptly comes back to herself, meeting Obi-Wan’s grim and panicked gaze.

Anakin is alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: i'm behind on my thesis work and my course work  
> me: because of my inability to deal with the above, i'm suffering an extended depressive episode  
> also me: obviously this is the best time to write fanfiction
> 
> (i'm doing much better today, never fear! finishing this chapter made me feel a lot better.)
> 
> next chapter: DORMÉ ULTIMATE BADASS TAKES THE GALAXY BY VERY COVERT AND QUIET STORM up hopefully before september!
> 
> and a personal thank you to all you lovely folks leaving comments, you make me feel full of sunshine like a fairy princess :)


	5. five: dormé

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Panaka had looked her up and down. “Where is your family?”
> 
> Dormé spoke for the first time in the long time. “I have no family.”
> 
> There was kindness in Panaka’s gaze if she wanted it. “Would you like one?”

 

After speaking with Padmé, Dormé makes for the docking bays. Her ship, with its green and silver astromech, is a slim, elegant Nubian design, equipped to transport a small crew but capable of being piloted alone. Unlike the Royal House of Naboo ships, and the yacht afforded to Padmé for her services as Queen, it’s plated in a quiet, unassuming gunmetal grey. For someone in her line of work, it’s ideal. On a planet where official vehicles are fire-coloured or mirrored like water, this ship is designed to slip by without notice.

 

 

No one notices Dormé. It has always been this way. As a child, she was quiet, watchful, a shadowed slip of a girl with soft doe-eyes, lingering in the back of classrooms and libraries. She spoke little, laughed less, but she saw everything.

Everything except Captain Panaka. 

He’d seen her at Padmé Naberrie’s inauguration as Princess of Theed, lingering in the background, staring intently at the holoscreen as the Princess spoke of her vision for the city.

“You,” Panaka had said, “look a good deal like her.” For clarification, he had pointed to the screen, where young Padmé stood in all her fair-skinned, dark-haired glory.

Dormé had hummed, curious, but even at thirteen, she had known enough to know what was coming.

Panaka had looked her up and down. “Where is your family?”

Dormé spoke for the first time in the long time. “I have no family.”

There was kindness in Panaka’s gaze if she wanted it. “Would you like one?”

 

 

In her ship, Dormé sets the flight protocols. “Back to Naboo, Arnine.”

The droid whistles inquisitively.

“No,” she says, “but it must appear that way. At least three jumps between here and there. There must be no means of tracing Polis Massa as the refuge of our sisters.”

Arnine beeps an affirmative and plugs into the navicomputer. Meanwhile, Dormé turns to the comm centre.

Elié answers promptly. “This is High Tide.”

“This is Sando,” Dormé says calmly. To her credit, Elié’s expression does not waver. “Requesting reroute to Coruscant. ETA at eleven-hundred hours day after next.”

“Done,” Elié says. “Is there anything else you require?”

“No,” Dormé says, and terminates the connection.

Arnine whistles, and the stars stretch into a warped blue blur around them.

 

 

Panaka had brought her to the Princess’ manor in Theed to be trained. Ija had looked her up and down, much as Panaka had, and smiled, much as Panaka had. “A good likeness,” Ija had noted. “Let us hope you have more than a pretty face to recommend you, my girl.”

“She does,” Panaka said confidently. “And there’s time.”

“Not much,” Ija replied, “if you're right about the Princess’ future.”

Dormé looked between them, putting the pieces together. When she spoke, she did so with soft, deliberate intent. 

“When Padmé Naberrie is Queen,” she said, “I will be her shadow.”

Ija knelt down before her, her hair clouding and unruly over her head, her dark skin like char wood in the room’s half-light. 

“Yes,” she said, “you will. And I will make you ready.”

 

 

For a year, Ija trained her. They rose at dawn to perform slow, aching dances that were accelerated to a brutal pace in sparring sessions later. Dormé learned poisons, knives, blasters, hands, how to subdue and wound and kill with minimal effort and minimal pain. She learned the cosmetic rituals of the Royal House, how to mix the white paints and powders, the red lipstick and blue woad, how to care for and arrange the elaborate hairpieces of the Queen’s throne. She learned to sew and to mend, to heal every wound she inflicted and those she never would.

She did not meet Padmé Naberrie. She watched her speeches and public appearances, practiced the measured, passionate diction, practiced moving as deliberately as the Princess did, practiced the coltish impulsivity suppressed under municipal responsibility. But Dormé did not meet Padmé.

It was not necessary, Ija told her. The Princess had a decoy if the worst should happen now. But Dormé was training for the greater challenge.

Ija taught her cryptography and xenolinguistics. She learned to fly and hotwire any number of vehicles, how to slice into foreign programs and databases, how to brute force a transmission from one station to another, and she learned that if she ever had to employ that last lesson, she would not live to tell about it.

And, true to Panaka’s promise, she had a family. Ija fed her, hugged her, plaited her hair and read to her in the evenings. She patched Dormé's scrapes and tended to her bruises. She took Dormé outside every day, bought her sweets if the lessons had gone well and if they had not. She listened, and spoke gently, and never raised her voice or her hand in anger.

For a year, twelve hours a day, every day, Dormé trained and learned and loved. And then, abruptly, without warning, the King was dead.

She watched the broadcast in the training centre with Ija and Panaka. 

“This isn't right,” Panaka muttered.

Ija looked between them. “No,” she agreed, voice low, “it isn't. Something threatens the Naboo.”

“The Princess is ready,” Panaka said.

As she had a year before, Ija knelt before Dormé. “And you, my girl?”

Fiercely, Dormé answered, “I am ready.”

 

 

Arnine fetches her after their third jump. They’re not in the Chommell sector yet, but there’s a planet below where they can refuel the ship. Arnine stays with the ship, but Dormé dons a drab brown robe and checks that the simple braid swinging down her back is not too perfect, is just lopsided enough, before disembarking.

She adopts a hoarse, guttural accent in Basic after listening intently to the other patrons of the way station. This is the most common — a nearby planet, or perhaps this planet’s other continent — and least likely to attract attention.

She pays with Republic credits — Palpatine either hasn't bothered or hasn't yet managed to rename them — and is on her way.

 

 

Dormé met the other handmaidens before she met the Queen. Each arrived to the Royal Palace accompanied by their mentor, their guardian. Panaka stood at the head of the room in parade rest, his hands clasped neatly behind his back.

“Each of you,” he said, clear and direct, “has been chosen for this most necessary duty. You have been trained for this: to protect your Queen. Now, Naboo is a peaceful planet, and in recent history there has been little violence against the Royal House, but the future is uncertain. The assassination of the King is unprecedented. We cannot know that you will be unharmed throughout the commission of your duty. For this reason, if you wish to leave, to resign this position, we now offer you the opportunity to do so. It will not come again.”

The girls did not move. They did not look to each other or their mentors for guidance. They stood, silent and proud, under Panaka’s appraisal.

“You honour the ancestors by honouring your duty,” Panaka said warmly. “You have been taught such already, but it bears repeating now: You are the Queen’s handmaidens. Your first loyalty is to her. If you can preserve her life by sacrificing your own, it is your duty to do so. You are her eyes and ears and hands. Her dearest friends, her closest confidantes. You are the last line of defence against whatever may seek to harm the Queen and your people.”

He looked around, holding the gaze of each of the girls. “In brief, you are her sisters.”

There was a flutter of motion, of eyes looking and looking back, of a stifled smile, a nervous clench of knuckles, of seeing, of exposure. Dormé understood it immediately. They would have been trained already to know such tells, but that the girls, the handmaidens, would reveal themselves so was a good faith offering, a lowering of the veils they would always wear.

Panaka stood before each of them, handing them a ring bearing the Royal seal. Eirtaé. Moteé. Rabé. Cordé. Sabé. Saché. Yané. Dormé. Sisters.

Ija squeezed her shoulder. “I am very proud of you, my girl,” she murmured. “If you need me, you will know how to find me.”

“Of course I will,” Dormé said, a little affronted at the thought that any could doubt her. “You have taught me well, Ija.”

Ija smiled, pulled her close into a firm hug. She smelled like pooja flowers and earthenware, the faint sweetness of chocolate. “You are the best of my students, Dormé. Honour the ancestors. Protect the Queen. May the waters see you back to me someday.”

 

 

They drop from hyperspace on schedule after three more jumps. 

“Excellent work,” Dormé says to Arnine. The droid whistles cheekily back to her, and Dormé grins, unwilling to police herself in the safe isolation of the cabin. “Let’s get our orders.”

Elié answers their comm promptly. “This is High Tide.”

“This is Sando.”

“Please stand by. You are being connected to the Royal Palace.”

Dormé waits. 

Lyseé materializes on the holoprojector. “Dormé! It is so good to see you.”

“And you, Lyseé,” Dormé says warmly. “I understand I have new orders?”

“The Queen requests that you rendezvous with the Senator’s household on Coruscant. Officially, you are there to help them ready the apartments for the next senator, and to provide transportation back to Naboo if possible.”

“I hope I am not the first option in off-planet transport,” Dormé says delicately.

“You're not,” Lyseé assures her. “But if you find you can, it would be appreciated. Don't burden the taxpayers and so on.”

“Of course.”

“Unofficially,” Lyseé says, “we would like you to investigate the whereabouts of Senator Amidala. You are aware that she has been missing since the rise of the Empire?”

“I am,” Dormé says, allowing a note of sorrow into her voice.

“Ancestors willing, she is safe,” Lyseé says. “Good luck, Dormé. Report when you can.”

“Of course,” Dormé says. “Please give my regards to the Queen.”

“Consider it done,” Lyseé says, smiling, and closes the transmission.

There’s a quick beep at the console, a notification, and Dormé looks to it curiously. Intelligence, messages, heavily encrypted and encoded. She smiles.

There had been no reason to doubt the House of Tides, Naboo’s intelligence agency. Dormé has worked for them since the outbreak of the Clone Wars, and they have never once failed her. But it’s reassuring to know that, even though she is no longer their agent, they are looking out for her. 

It’s the perfect cover, really. She will arrive to Coruscant as a former handmaiden serving her missing lady, but no one inclined to pay attention to her and the rest of Padmé's household will be surprised if she acts as detective. They will expect it. And while they look for her search for a missing senator, she will look for a missing youngling.

With the cease of hostilities across the galaxy, the trip to Coruscant is relatively short and unbroken by drops from hyperspace. It’s still a few days, and Dormé reviews the Holonet reports, what records the House of Tides had of Ahsoka Tano, and Padmé and Obi-Wan’s own intelligence. It’s not much. Ahsoka, by all accounts, is an impressive child, skilled in combat and as a tactician, with honour and integrity in spades. Reading the file on Ahsoka’s treason charges, Dormé aches for the Togruta, to have suffered that loss of faith and to have had the courage to more wisely invest it. 

In a dim, faded sense, Dormé knows the pain Ahsoka surely felt, from her own orphaning, her own abandonment. To this day, she does not know if her mother is still alive, or why she was abandoned, but she does not really care, either. She put her faith in herself, and, when the chance came, in her sisters. She has never regretted this.

She hopes Ahsoka Tano does not regret her decision. 

 

 

Sabé had been the first to meet the Queen — before she had even met the other handmaidens, in fact. Sabé had served Padmé Naberrie as decoy during her brief term as Princess of Theed, and was devoted to her in a way that savoured more of friendship than rank. 

Cordé and Dormé were the next to meet her. This had little to do with any particular skills held between them, little to do with anything except that of the seven new handmaidens, they alone shared the Queen’s age and colouring, that pale skin and dark hair, and could therefore most easily pass for her. Rabé, with her brown skin and glossy black hair, could not easily do so, though with enough face paint it would be possible; Eirtaé’s blonde locks and sky-blue eyes were acceptable only due to her skill as a fighter. Saché and Yané bore a closer resemblance, and Yané had the advantage of the Queen’s curling mane, but both were too young, barely twelve, just on the shy side of puberty to convincingly act as the fourteen-year-old Queen for any length of time.

Panaka led them into the Queen’s chambers. Her inauguration was still two weeks away, and she would not receive in the throne room until the crown was rightfully hers. He knocked, entered, and bowed; Cordé and Dormé bowed gracefully behind him.

“Your Majesty,” he said respectfully. “It is my honour to introduce Cordé and Dormé. If necessary, they will act as decoys for you.”

The Queen waited only long enough not to ruin the work of the seamstress tailoring her robes before turning to see them.

“Cordé and Dormé,” the Queen said, her voice naturally high and clear, unlike the deeper and more solemn tones she adopted for public address. “I am honoured by your service.” Stepping carefully from the seamstress’ podium, she came to them, spine straight, head high, compassion writ in the bones of her cheeks, the reach of her hands for theirs.

Dormé’s breath caught as the Queen took her hand and gently squeezed it.

“I am blessed with a sister already,” the Queen said gently, “but I am beyond grateful to gain you as sisters now. Troubled times await us, and danger as well, but I am all the braver with you at my side. Together, we will serve the Naboo and preserve the peace so necessary to our people.”

In that moment, more than any other, Dormé knew she would die for this girl, gladly and without fear, not because it was her duty, but because of the love unfurling in her breast.

It would be impossible, Dormé thought, to know Padmé Naberrie and not love her.

 

 

Were she prone to exaggeration, Dormé might say that it took longer to pass through Coruscant’s planetary security than it did to travel from Naboo to Coruscant. But she manages to land at the Naboo hangar by the end of the day, and Rabé is waiting for her when she disembarks with Arnine.

The two embrace with quick surety, fitting together as seamlessly as they had when they shared the Queen’s bedchamber, eight beds circling hers like sun rays. 

Rabé says, voice thick, “It is so good to see you, Dormé.”

Dormé holds her closer. “I am glad I was able to return,” she whispers. “Come. Let us go to the Senator’s apartments, and we can prepare for the coming days.”

Moteé and Captain Typho meet her at the apartments, bowing low. Dormé returns their bow. The strictures of rank do not demand she do so; as an agent of the House of Tides, her authority supersedes their own, and they all know this, but these are her allies, her friends, who have guarded the body of her most precious sister with their own bodies since the Tides took her, and she respects them too much not to treat them with honour.

Formalities aside, she hugs Moteé and Typho. Only three years ago, she had served in their place, at their side, and her affection for them has not diminished. 

“Dormé,” Typho says gravely, releasing her. “We are grateful for your presence.”

“And I am grateful for yours,” Dormé says. And then: “Arnine?”

The astromech whistles in the affirmative, photoreceptor blinking rapidly as it runs sonic interference with any surveillance devices on the premises. Swiftly, Dormé says, “You have checked for unwanted ears?”

“Just before you arrived,” Moteé confirms. “But it does not hurt to be overcautious.” 

“Good,” Dormé says. “Here is what you must know. The Senator does not require your worry. I have your statements of the day of her disappearance. The situation is in hand. The Queen has appointed Jamillia as interim representative, and she will arrive with her household within the week. Captain Typho, you are to stay with Senator Jamillia to ensure continuity in the household security. Moteé, Rabé, you will escort Senator Amidala’s belongings back to Naboo. It is likely I will not join you. That is all I can tell you. You may stop now, Arnine.”

The droid’s photoreceptor goes dark; the faint whine of sonic interference fades into the electric hum of the apartments. To the credit of her colleagues, her family, none of the three before her look disturbed at her speech. Their expressions are grim, but that is only to be expected. 

Rabé breaks the silence. “We have prepared a room for you, Dormé,” she says. “Would you like to refresh yourself before dinner?”

“I thank you, Rabé,” Dormé murmurs. 

Dinner is a simple affair: greens and rice and fish, served with water and wine, with the Royal House’s special blend of tea served at the end of the meal. It is a Naboo meal in its entirety, and reassuringly so. The reasons for it are almost certainly to cultivate this reassurance, this nod to a more secure period in their shared services. Nothing is certain now. Nothing can be trusted except the bonds of sisterhood between them.

Dormé cradles her cup of tea between her hands. Tomorrow, it will properly begin.

 

 

The Invasion of Naboo changed everything. This is true, and it isn't. The absence of Dormé’s parents changed everything, and so did her attendance at the Princess of Theed’s inaugural speech and Panaka’s observation of her, and so did Ija and the sisters and the murder of King Ars Veruna, and so did the first time she met Padmé. 

But the Invasion of Naboo was different. The Invasion taught Dormé to be a spy.

Padmé had been whisked away by the Jedi, with only Rabé and Sabé and Moteé and Eirtaé to protect her. Saché and Yané had been left behind under Cordé’s care, but Dormé — Dormé had gone to Ija.

“Make me useful,” Dormé had begged her. “Help me serve my Queen.”

And Ija had kissed her brow and pulled a plain brown cloak over her shoulders and taken her to the House of Tides.

 

 

Dormé takes her leave of Padmé's household early in the morning. The sky is still dark, as dark as it ever gets on Coruscant, but Rabé is already awake, and quietly presses a thermos of tea into Dormé’s hand as she slips out the door.

She heads to the Senate. She needs to preserve her cover, and making discreet inquiries with certain Senators can only help.

Garm Bel Iblis, representing Corellia, spares only a few minutes for her, and she can understand why: his office is in an uproar in the wake of Palpatine’s coronation. No, he doesn't know anything about Senator Amidala’s whereabouts; yes, it’s a damn kriffing shame she’s missing; she was one of the only competent people in the kriffing Senate; yes, if he hears anything, of course he’ll contact her office.

Dormé gives him a card that does not have her real name, nor any actual means of contacting her. What it does have, however, is a missive from the Royal House of Naboo, concealed in its hardware. When he inserts it into his datapad to add her to his contacts — politicians never let go of a contact if they can help it — it will instead offer him the option of downloading Apailana’s message.

In any case, she’s out of his office in less than five minutes. Onto the next.

Mon Mothma is far more willing to carve out some time for her. “I admit,” the Senator says demurely, “I have been expecting a visit from someone like you since I heard Padmé had gone missing. I commend you for your prompt investigation.”

Dormé smiles politely, treats the Senator with every courtesy, and proceeds down her list of questions. Mon Mothma is close-lipped, but polite, and utterly unhelpful. Nonetheless, Dormé gives her another encrypted card.

“Please do contact me if you think of anything at all,” she says courteously. Mon smiles, but says nothing.

She goes next to the offices of the Alderaanian senator. Organa is not there, of course, but she is not meant to know that, and considering how close Bail and Padmé are, it is necessary to at least make an attempt.

Bail’s secretary makes excuses, and accepts a card on his behalf, this one just containing the information of her false identity and nothing more. She cannot be too careful.

But across the hall, someone calls her as she is preparing to leave, a young Pantoran woman with large amber eyes.

“—Oh,” the Pantoran says, embarrassed. “Do forgive me, I mistook you for Senator Amidala.”

“An understandable mistake,” Dormé says kindly. “May I ask — are you close with Senator Amidala?”

The Pantoran hesitates. Dormé crosses to her quickly.

“I was chosen to protect her before she was Queen,” she murmurs. “Now, the Queen has sent me to discover the whereabouts of her most loyal servant.”

“Oh,” the Pantoran says in relief. “In that case — won't you come in?”

 

 

Riyo Chuchi dismisses her assistant and brews tea, pouring it gracefully into sturdy earthenware mugs. 

“Senator Amidala is a dear friend to me,” she begins. Dormé watches her closely, blowing on the tea to cool it. “She mentored me through my first year here, and we have worked on legislation frequently. Is there no news of her?”

“Not as yet,” Dormé says gently. “But my investigation has only just begun. May I ask if you have any knowledge of her activities the day of her disappearance?”

“Wouldn't her handmaidens have a better idea?” Riyo asks doubtfully.

“I have their statements. But I would not dismiss any source of information out of hand, Senator. If you know anything — if there is anywhere you believe she may have gone, anyone who might wish her harm, any friends who may have offered her shelter, I implore you: tell me.”

Hesitantly, Riyo offers, “Well, there was that Togruta girl — a former Jedi apprentice, I believe — it is possible Padmé would have gone searching for her. In light of — in light of the Temple, you know.”

Dormé says immediately, “Do you know her address?”

Riyo has just opened her mouth to reply when the doors to her office open, and four Senate guards enter. Leading them, clad in black robes, the scar over his eye ugly against the pallor of his skin, is Anakin Skywalker.

Dormé rises instantly, and bows low. The courtesy and deference trained into her bone and blood are now her greatest weapon against the shock of seeing him. “Master Skywalker! It is a great relief to see you safe, sir.”

His gaze flits over the room, seeing everything and nothing. “Dormé. The Emperor wishes to see you.”

His eyes, when he looks at her, are gold.

Unnerved, she bows again. “I am at the Emperor’s service.”

Skywalker nods brusquely, and turns to leave.

“Senator Chuchi,” Dormé says, soft and quick, “may we resume this conversation?”

Riyo’s eyes are fixed at the door, at the threatening black figure of Anakin Skywalker.

“I think it best if we do not,” she says.

 

 

Skywalker walks her through the Senate halls, and curtly dismisses the guards when they approach the Chancellor’s — well, now the Emperor’s, Dormé supposes — quarters.

She tries to draw him out. “I am greatly relieved that you have survived this past week’s turmoil, Master Skywalker.”

He fixes her with that unsettling golden gaze. “I am loyal to the Emperor,” he says flatly. “Only the disloyal suffered a traitor’s fate.”

“Of course,” she murmurs, and falls silent. 

They walk mutely onwards until they reach a turbolift. But once inside, Skywalker says, low and rough, “You are looking for Padmé.”

“I have been commanded so by my Queen.”

He turns around, staring at her. In the confined space, he looms, tall and terrifying, a dark and furious wraith; she has never felt her lack of height so keenly.

“Where is she?” he demands.

“I do not know, Master Skywalker,” Dormé whispers. It’s the truth. She clings to the truth of it.

“But you will find her.” It’s not a question, nor a request.

“If it is within my power to do so, I will,” Dormé breathes.

He looks at her, unblinking, hard, unsmiling, and nods curtly. “She is my wife,” Skywalker says. “She belongs at my side.”

Anger flares, hot and dangerous, beneath her ribs. Dormé swallows it down. Her priority is getting out of here safely. She cannot contradict this man who is not the man she knew. Her information is outdated. She cannot risk Padmé. “I understand, Master Skywalker.”

“Don't call me that. I am Lord Vader. You would do well to remember that, Dormé.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The lift doors open. Vader lifts a brow at her, mouth twisting sardonically. “After you.”

The Chancellor’s chambers are grand, stately, and stifling. As soon as she enters, she is aware of an insidious, suffocating creeping upon her, something dark and cruel oozing to drag her down like quicksand. 

Dormé focuses on her breathing, takes three steps forward, and bows her lowest. _Respect,_ she thinks desperately, _deference, loyalty: give him no cause to doubt you._

She feels the weight of a watcher on her. She does not look up. She does not rise. 

At length, a dragging, creaking voice says, “Rise.”

Dormé rises. She does not raise her gaze.

“A mousy little thing, aren't you,” says the Emperor, amusement in his voice. “I wonder at Apailana’s judgment, sending you on such a task.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she murmurs. She does not allow another thought into her head.

“Have you had any luck tracking down your double?”

“No, Your Majesty.”

Behind her, where Vader lurks in the shadows, there’s a wounded, ragged, gasping breath. Immediately, the burden of Palpatine’s gaze is gone, fixed on Anakin, and she understands: he could not care less for her or her mission. She is here as a means to an end, for the express purpose of causing Anakin pain.

“What a shame,” Palpatine says gleefully. “Do you suppose she will ever be found?”

“I fear that I do not follow your meaning, Your Majesty.”

“Do you think it likely she has survived the last week? Without her guards and her girls?”

He wants her to say that Padmé is likely dead, because that is what will hurt Anakin. Vader. She must not think of him as the Jedi boy she knew so briefly. To be party to something so cruel is abhorrent to her, but she knows where her loyalties lie. It is no choice at all.

“I believe it to be improbable, Your Majesty,” Dormé says softly.

And just like that, it’s over. He is no longer interested in the amusement she offers. He dismisses her uncaringly; she bows low and retreats with as much grace as is possible.

Vader does not follow.

 

 

The first time she met Anakin Skywalker, she had been nearly fifteen; he had been barely nine. They were introduced to each other almost as an afterthought by Panaka, understandably too caught up in the invasion of his planet and subjugation of his people to care for social niceties. In the Gungan swamps, Padmé unavailable to him, they had shared crackers and passed a thermos of tea between them. They did not speak much, he too uneasy in the company of yet another stranger after the loss of everything he’d known, she too exhausted from weeks of little sleep and less food as a freedom fighter. But he was a sweet boy, a kind boy, a brave child who clambered with selfless, reckless enthusiasm into a cockpit to try to help his friends.

The second time, she was just barely twenty-four; he was nearing twenty. A tall, handsome, cocky boy trying on a man’s responsibility for size, staring at Padmé — beautiful, intelligent, passionate, imperfect and arrogant Padmé — with unmasked heat in his gaze.

Dormé didn't blame him then. She does not blame him now. It is impossible to know Padmé and not love her. 

It is harder to forgive Padmé for loving him.

 

 

Dormé finds herself in Padmé's senatorial offices after fleeing the Emperor. It is unkind to think of her retreat as “fleeing”; she knows Ija, if she were here, would gently remind her to reorganize her thoughts productively. _It’s a strategic retreat,_ Ija would say, not a run born of cowardice and fear. _Calm yourself. Regroup. Remember the plan._

Which is all well and good, but Dormé knows herself, and knows that the dryness in her mouth and the trembling of her hands is symptomatic of fear. She did not retreat. She fled. She would not like to face the Emperor again. He would make her a weapon of petty cruelty. She does not want to see Vader again, either. She does not like feeling guilt for someone who has caused so much pain.

It is Padmé's nature to forgive, to seek out the experiences of others, to try and understand. Dormé is not so compassionate. She does not have that luxury, and it is not about right or wrong, good or evil, just or unjust. She was orphaned and found and trained to serve Padmé. That is her role. That is her purpose. She fought in the Naboo resistance during the Trade Federation’s occupation because it served Padmé. She followed a young senator from her home to the political quagmire of Coruscant because it served Padmé. She entered the House of Tides at the outset of the Clone Wars because ending the war would serve Padmé. She abandoned her post and flew across the stars for nine hours, heart in her mouth, because Padmé was giving birth, Padmé was wounded, Padmé was lost and could not be returned to the waters that raised them all, and she brought a wardrobe because Dormé knows her Queen, and knew she would need her armour. 

Of course she loves Padmé. She always has. And she looks upon Anakin Skywalker, who loved Padmé without knowing how — without knowing that to love a Queen, you must serve her; to love a rebel, you must fight for her; to love a prophet, you must die for her.

Anakin loved her and did not know how to love her, and Dormé pities him for it. Vader wants to love her in order to love himself, and Dormé pities him for it.

Padmé loves Anakin, loves Vader, and Dormé hates her for it, mourns her for it, and resigns herself to it. It is inexorable. It could not be stopped. She was the sun and he a barren planet, frozen in space, and Padmé looked at this brave, kind boy and loved him for himself; she looked at this arrogant, dangerous man and loved him for who he could be. She will look at Vader and unwillingly, miserably, inevitably love him for who he had been.

 

 

Her hands have stopped shaking. Dormé breathes, listens to herself. Her heart rate has returned to normal. She swallows; her mouth is no longer dried with fear. She leaves the Senate.

Time to get to work.

Arnine meets her at the outer boroughs of the Senate District as planned, a blaster and three vibroblades hidden in its innards. Together, they wander through the city, stopping to buy a turnover from a street vendor for dinner. It’s already nearly dark, as dark as it can get in Coruscant. It’s been an exhausting day. 

This is what Dormé knows: Ahsoka Tano is a Jedi who left the Jedi Order. As an apprentice, she was exceptionally gifted, a strategist and a leader and a capable soldier. She knew how to survive. That isn't the type of thing one forgets. Dormé knows this better than most.

She had stayed on Coruscant after leaving the Order. She had a place to stay, presumably some means of earning a living. Someone, somewhere, knew where Ahsoka Tano lay her head at night, and that, that means —

That means Ahsoka Tano is no longer there. Knowing where she had lived would certainly make Dormé’s job easier, as she could case the location for clues as to the Togruta’s next whereabouts, but not knowing isn’t a death blow. It just means that Dormé needs to understand where Ahsoka went next. 

The logical assumption is that she tried to get off-planet; heading to Shili, perhaps, or Ryloth or Kashyyyk in search of sympathetic friends to take her in. But Ahsoka, Dormé thinks, is smarter than that. Friends and allies would be the first target of any determined search for her, and Ahsoka is honourable. She would not want to repay loyalty and generosity with a death sentence. 

The next option is that Ahsoka vanished down into the Coruscanti underworld, making herself a stranger, doing everything she could to stay ahead of the clone trooper patrols sweeping the planet. But that doesn't sit quite right with Dormé, either. To stay eternally on the run in one of the galaxy’s most inhospitable cultures? No. Ahsoka, warrior, survivor, would know that she needed security, shelter, and sustenance. In which case, she would not try to outrun the patrols; she would search out a place they had already cleared.

The answer comes to her. For a moment, she is stunned and terrified at Ahsoka’s audacity. It’s a brilliant choice, and an absolutely lethal one if she is caught. 

Dormé kneels down. “Arnine,” she murmurs. “Can you access blueprints of the Jedi Temple?”

The droid beeps in the affirmative. 

“Good. Let us return to the ship, then, and prepare.”

Whatever comes of this line of inquiry, Dormé will need the ship ready. If she finds Ahsoka, they will need to leave immediately; if she does not, she will need to expand her search to popular and accessible star systems. Either way, she cannot afford a delay.

At the ship, Dormé comms Rabé. “Tonight, I think,” she says. “If you urgently need to leave, be at the ship tonight.”

“Very well,” Rabé says, voice lilting sweetly. “I will inform Moteé.”

After, Dormé checks her hold, finding thermal shields to use if necessary. They’re relatively new technology, commissioned and implemented by the House of Tides in the past six months; they’ve saved an asset more than once from enemy scans of the ship, looking for signs of undeclared passengers. But it would be helpful to have Rabé with her, if she finds Ahsoka; any discrepancies could be explained by another passenger rummaging in the hold.

At the holoprojector, Arnine whistles to attract her attention, arm waving at the architectural projection of the Temple. Dormé walks around the table, studying the plans, asking the droid to show a close up of one section, a description of another. 

Two things become immediately apparent: she must make her approach directly; she must prepare for the worst.

Quietly, she kneels down before Arnine. “I need to record a message,” she says.

The droid, well-used to her habits, flashes its photoreceptor in readiness.

 

 

R9-D3 — Arnine, as Dormé calls it — is a ninth-generation Nubian astromech. Its functions include mechanical repair; navigational calculations; smuggling; and, of course, information storage. Arnine is not technically her astromech; it belongs to the House of Tides in reality, and to the Royal House of Naboo on paper. But they've worked together since Dormé joined the House of Tides three years ago, and they make a good team. She’ll be sorry to remand it to the agency’s custody after this mission.

At some point during every mission, Dormé records a farewell message. She has never had to send one, because she is exceptionally good at her job, but it comforts her to know that if the worst should happen, those she loves will know why she died. She cannot give any details, of course, in case the message is intercepted, but she does it every time anyways.

If she’s honest with herself, it’s less for others than for herself. A reminder of what she fights and lives for; an incentive to fight, an absolution should she die. 

But now — there is so little she can say. Nothing to or about Padmé, or the Jedi, or their allies; nothing about the twins. 

Arnine warbles inquisitively. Dormé swallows. “Alright,” she says.

“If you are seeing this message,” she begins, the phrase habitually familiar, “then I have failed in my mission. Though these words offer little comfort, I offer my apologies for this failure, and my acknowledgment that my life could not be given to a greater cause. I am grateful to have served. My Queens: I honour you. My comrades: I salute you. My sisters: I love you. May you serve with the grace, courage, and compassion by which our people are known. And may the waters see us reunited with our ancestors.”

 

 

Arnine stays at the ship, waiting for Rabé, monitoring Dormé’s comm in case of an emergency. Dormé heads to the Temple.

She changes mag-lev trains five times, zipping randomly throughout the city, and leaves at a crowded platform a ten minute walk from the Temple. There are clone troopers at every corner, blasters hoisted threateningly in the dark. She keeps her head down, moving at pace with the crowds, following various clusters of beings down narrow lanes. Eventually, feeling more confident that she was not recognized, she moves circuitously towards the Temple.

There are clones patrolling along the stairs, body language suggesting boredom, restlessness. If she appears suspicious, they’ll be on high alert in seconds. 

Carefully, not pausing in her pace, Dormé reaches into the folds of her cloak. She doesn't carry much, as a rule; the less you carry, the less incriminates you if you get caught. But she’s got a few gadgets at are useful. This time, she has the blades and blaster from Arnine, of course, and, more usefully, a diversion.

It’s a small mirrored ball. As soon as it hits a surface, it’ll spring open, and scuttle away on a dozen mechanical legs. It will catch any stray light, and occasionally emit a loud noise, and, after three minutes, will explode loudly, but mostly harmlessly. It looks like nothing so much as an eccentric party favour; it won't cause alarm so much as surprise and amusement. 

Dormé drops the diversion from her sleeve, and waits. Within a minute, she can see it sparkling merrily across the steps; then it begins to sputter and crackle like fireworks. One pair of patrolling troopers moves from their post to investigate, quickly followed by another. Pulling the shadows around her like a cloak, Dormé slips up the stairs and into the Temple.

Inside, it’s dark and silent. The air reeks of death. She expected this, and has certainly seen her share of the afterbirth of violence, but there is something especially cruel here: that so many beings, so many younglings, learning to protect galactic peace, would have been slaughtered without remorse. It’s a different cruelty than the slaughter of innocents, non-combatants, and so on. This was a calculated, deliberate, savage act of evil. Dormé knows no other way to conceive of it.

She waits in a black corner of the entrance hall for her eyes to adjust. Human eyes typically need the better part of an hour to adjust to the dark, but this is Coruscant; there is never a true lack of light. Even here, the clouds above reflect neon lighting back into the Temple. It takes her only a moment to feel confident navigating the unlit halls. 

She thinks of the blueprints Arnine had shown her, and keeps track of her location as she moves through the Temple. Here is a training salle; here, a mess hall, a classroom, a room with a thousand fountains devastatingly still in the night. She passes living quarters and what can only be the crèche, a warm nest of a room; but it’s not until she’s wandering through the library that Dormé realizes she’s being followed.

She does not stop, slow, or speed her way into a dark alcove, continuing methodically to search the stacks for signs of anyone, anything. Her heart races. She is already detailing her alibi. Senator Amidala was close to the Jedi; Dormé had only wanted to investigate her connection here, and had not trusted the troopers to allow her. Why had she not informed the Emperor or his staff? Because her first loyalty is to the Queen of Naboo; she could not break her Queen’s trust so easily, nor could she bear to raise hopes if they were only going to be dashed. Why the weaponry? A dangerous time, a dangerous place; surely she could not be begrudged means of defending herself?

But her pursuer is no clone trooper. There is no heft of a blaster as large as a limb, no unconscious clack of plastisteel armour plating. Were she anywhere else, any-when else, she would suspect either her sisters or a Jedi, but her sisters would not surprise her like this, and the Jedi —

Dormé stops. It is a risk, but a necessary one. She kneels in the aisle, and puts her hands at her head.

Her pursuer stops a metre behind her. There is no sound, no smell, just a shift in the air to indicate she is not alone. Carefully, Dormé chooses her words. She will have only one chance to get this right.

“Padmé Amidala.”

A pause. Then, her pursuer speaks.

“Padmé sent you?”

It’s a young, female voice, and Dormé slowly rises, projecting each motion so as not to alarm the youngling. She turns.

“She sent me to find you and bring you to safety, Ahsoka,” Dormé says gently. 

The Togruta hesitates. “You look like her.”

“I was her handmaiden for many years,” Dormé says. “Before you knew her.”

Ahsoka looks up at her, eyes wide and hopeful and desperate. “You're really here to help?”

“I am,” Dormé says, and then Ahsoka launches herself at her, wrapping her arms tightly around Dormé, and it’s not an attack; it’s a hug. Ahsoka’s thin shoulders shake; there’s something damp on her cloak. Tears. Careful of Ahsoka’s lekku, Dormé hugs her back, murmuring soothingly the same words she would use when Saché woke from a nightmare, when Cordé suffered a broken arm during the Invasion and screwed her mouth shut with pain, when Yané’s menstrual cramps pulled her to the floor, unable to move with ache and shame.

“It will be alright,” Dormé whispers. “It will be alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *grabs you all by the shoulders* *stares deeply into your eyes* love my space daughters
> 
> in all seriousness: LOOK AT THIS. longest chapter up two weeks early! i'm so proud of us, folks. you've been cheerleaders of the highest caliber. we should get pompoms. 
> 
> i'm going to stop guessing when the next chapter will come up, because i've never been right yet, but this is the fic that will not be stopped. (knocks on wood.) STAY FABULOUS, SPACE FRIENDS.


	6. six: padmé

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They leave Polis Massa immediately.

 

 

They leave Polis Massa immediately. Staying is out of the question. Bail arranges transport to Coruscant, grimly determined that no one should note his absence, and Yoda settles into the ship the Wookiees had gifted him, somber and resigned as he makes for Dagobah.

Sabé and Obi-Wan take the yacht and are gone for a day.

Padmé knows why they left her behind. She has not said a word since seeing Anakin on the holoscreen. She barely moved without prompting. She cannot be trusted as they need to trust her. So she waits on an empty asteroid, her babes in her arms, and paces the length of her suite. 

Artoo keeps watch at the door, electroprod and buzzsaw at the ready. Threepio fusses in the kitchen, bringing her thick, hearty drinks when she can't make herself eat, storing the breast milk he helps her pump, and fastidiously handing her clean swaddling cloths and disinfecting wipes as she changes the twins’ diapers, burps them, nurses them, holds them.

It is, Padmé thinks, selfish in the worst way to use her children as a reason to live. No child should have to carry that burden. No mother should inflict it. But she is coming to realize that she is selfish, deeply so. It was selfish to love Anakin. It was selfish to marry him. In a very real way, it was selfish to kill him.

Except she couldn't manage even that.

Anakin is alive, and Padmé is at once deliriously ecstatic and petrified in fear. The man she loves still lives and he will kill her if he finds her. The man she loves still lives and he will wage war on everything she holds dear. The man she loves still lives, and if he finds her, the kindest thing he can do will be to kill her.

 

 

Sabé and Obi-Wan return eventually. Artoo nearly electrocutes Obi-Wan in his eagerness to protect her; Sabé, always clever, enters second, avoiding the droid’s arsenal with grace. 

There’s a smudge of ash on Obi-Wan’s cheek, spark-burns in his cloak. Sabé, as ever, is perfectly and impeccably dressed, but there’s a bruise on her forearm that was not there when she left. Padmé stares at them. In her arms, secured to her front, Luke begins to cry. Next to him, Leia is serious and irate, looking around curiously.

“Padmé,” Sabé says gently, taking her arm. “Are you well?”

She doesn't know how to answer. As they had on Mustafar, when she failed to win back her husband, words fail her.

Obi-Wan looks to Threepio. “Are her things packed?”

“Of course, Master Kenobi,” Threepio says, that characteristic note of offence and anxiety clear in his tone. 

“Then let's go,” Obi-Wan says grimly.

 

 

Her yacht — her beautiful mirrored star-ship, that tangible evidence of her skills and service, of the good she has done and continued to do — is gone. The ship which Sabé helps her enter is an ugly beast of a thing, blocky and inelegant. She hates it immediately.

In space, watching the stars blur blue around them as the hyperdrive kicks in, Padmé bursts into tears. Obi-Wan is piloting; Sabé, who had been directing Threepio with unpacking, is at her side in seconds.

“My dear,” Sabé says softly, kindly, and holds her, tucking Padmé's head into the crook of her shoulder. For a while, too long, not long enough, Padmé weeps, her hands fisted in Sabé’s beautiful robe, her tears staining the cloth, and Sabé hums a Naboo lullaby, and rocks her until she falls asleep.

 

 

“Your yacht was too well-known to come with us,” Obi-Wan says later, as they eat dinner (rehydrated fish, bread, and a green something pretending to be a vegetable). Sabé swoops around the table, refilling Padmé's glass and adding more food to her plate with a look that brooks no refusal. Dutifully, Padmé eats. Sabé takes a bottle of breast milk and begins to nurse Leia.

“I know,” Padmé says softly. 

He fiddles with his bread for a moment. “We got this one on Sluis Van.”

“Oh,” Padmé says. It makes sense. Sluis Van is relatively nearby, with little to no Republic — or, Imperial, rather — presence, a thriving black market of ships and crew, and shipbuilders willing to claim credit for something they have not made. 

She understands the decision. It’s practical and well-reasoned. But she still is torn between the desire to return to her cabin and cry, and the desire to punch Obi-Wan in the face.

 

 

Sabé sleeps with her. Not sexually. Just at her side, a long line of warmth in the cold loneliness of space. She sings Padmé to sleep and settles the twins in their cradle and holds her in the dark and wipes away her tears.

She hears Sabé and Obi-Wan arguing in fierce whispers later.

“It’s not normal,” he insists. “I have never seen her like this in all my years of knowing her. We may have to consider that she is not able to undertake these missions.”

“She is able,” Sabé bites back. “She is grieving, Obi-Wan. Everyone grieves differently.”

His voice cracks. “He was — he is just a man.”

“She loves him,” Sabé says, “and he destroys everything for which she lived.”

Silence. Padmé can picture Obi-Wan, wanting to defend Anakin, wanting to prove Sabé wrong, and having no means with which to do either. 

“She needs this,” Sabé says, kinder. “She needs a purpose. She needs to serve. Give her time. Give her purpose. I have known her far longer than you, and I have never once known her to fail in her duty.”

Obi-Wan says nothing. Padmé retreats soundlessly, returning to her children. Sabé is too generous. All she has ever done is fail.

 

 

Later, Padmé slips from Sabé’s arms and pads to the cockpit. Obi-Wan is staring into hyperspace, a dangerous habit, and he is exhausted. She can see it bruised under his eyes, in the sagging lines of his posture. She sits; he does not turn.

Her voice, when at last she speaks, is hoarse from disuse. “You must be so disappointed in me,” she says quietly.

He looks at her, that old cutting quickness back in his eyes. “Dis—? No. No, Padmé. I am worried about you. But you could not disappoint me.”

She clears her throat self-consciously. “I—” She stops. “It would have been better if I had killed him.”

Hesitantly, Obi-Wan reaches for her, his hand calloused on hers. “Yes,” he says, with acute misery. “It would have been.”

Padmé looks at him. “Or you.”

He looks at her. He has, she thinks, lost weight since Mustafar. Panic seizes her dully. He must not falter. “Or me,” he agrees quietly.

They sit quietly, the thrum of the hyperdrive, the electric whine of the console, the only sounds. 

“You overheard me arguing with Sabé,” Obi-Wan says suddenly.

Padmé meets his gaze. “Yes.”

“I am sorry.”

She waves his apology into the ether. “I needed to hear it. Sabé — Sabé has been my best friend since I knew what friends were. It is hard for her not to protect me. She has done so all my life. I just—”

She looks down.

“It would have been easier—” she tries, and her fragile composure crumbles. “I love him, Obi-Wan. What is wrong with me, that I love him?”

Obi-Wan is at her side in a heartbeat, and pulls her gently into an embrace. “I ask myself that same question every day,” he whispers. He’s crying, too, Padmé realizes. She clings to him all the tighter.

 

 

Sabé finds them some hours later, heads bent together in the kitchen, talking quietly. Their eyes speak clearly of too many tears and not enough sleep, but all Sabé does is brew a pot of tea and sit at their side.

“Alright,” she says. “What are we planning?”

 

 

They go to Utapau.

“I am hopeful the Port Administrator will be helpful to us,” Obi-Wan says gravely. “He assisted me during the search for General Grievous. He may be willing to share news.”

Padmé thinks back. “Tion Medon? I’ve worked with him before, coordinating relief efforts to Pau City during the wars. Together, we may be able go persuade him.”

Sabé considers the map Artoo is helpfully projecting. “I think it wise if you approach him, Obi-Wan, and arrange a meeting. I’d prefer to surveil our rendezvous before committing to a location, but this cantina seems to suit our purposes. Threepio should stay with the ship — he would not do well in such a situation — but Artoo should come with us.”

“And the twins?”

Sabé considers. “I think they should come with me and Padmé to the cantina. You, Master Jedi, I trust to take care of yourself.”

“But not me?” Padmé inquires, feeling improbably bold enough to tease.

Sabé laughs, and the ship rings with the bright sweet sound of it.

 

 

Sabé's milk comes in the night before they land on Utapau. She holds Leia with such tender care, such wonder, that Padmé nearly weeps from it, Luke in her own arms, at her own breast. 

“I am sorry,” Padmé whispers into the dark, her son lying sated on her belly, her head tentatively poised on Sabé's shoulder. “I have been so selfish.”

Sabé turns slowly, careful not to jostle Leia. “Dearheart,” she says, soft with love. “You need never apologize to me.”

Padmé looks into the dark. “It worries me that you say things like that,” she murmurs. “I worry that I am becoming too much like him.”

She doesn't need to say his name. Sabé understands her.

Leia, hungrier than her brother, finally pulls off with a yawn, a weak stretch. In thoughtful silence, Sabé rises and tucks her into the cradle at the foot of the bed, and then eases Luke down next to her. 

Padmé settles on her side, watchful as Sabé slips beneath the blankets, facing her. They cannot see each other, and maybe that is a blessing; Padmé doubts she would be brave enough to say these things in daylight. Fingers brush lightly against her cheek. She reaches, blindly, to catch them.

“If you did not worry,” Sabé says at last, “ _then_ I might worry. But you will worry enough for the both of us, my love. And if, for some reason, the responsibility the ancestors laid on your shoulders faltered enough for true selfishness, you may be sure that I would hold you accountable for it.”

Tears prick at Padmé's eyes; as if knowing, Sabé swipes her thumb over Padmé's cheek, wiping them away. Unable to speak, Padmé takes Sabé’s hand, open to her palm, and kisses away the salt of her own tears.

 

 

Utapau is wide and flat and wind-ravaged. From their dock in one of the satellite sinkholes of Pau City, Padmé squints up at the light, Leia crying and cranky in her sling across Padmé's chest. The wind roars at lethal speed above them, and it exhilarates that reckless, hungry part of her Anakin had both wanted and feared. He wanted her to be wild like him; he wanted her to be a safe sanctuary from his wildness. He could never decide which one, and so, she thinks, he loved her helplessly, an uneven push and pull crashing through his heart like waves.

“Come, my dear,” Sabé murmurs. Luke is nestled snugly into his sling, sleeping without a care in the world. Obi-Wan is gone already, vanished as soon as they’d landed to acquire their docking license and then away to seek out Tion Medon; they’ve waited until dusk droops over the city before disembarking themselves. Just behind Sabé, Artoo gives a proud little whir, pleased at his being trusted while Threepio putters in indignant relief inside the ship.

Artoo ends up leading the way; he has the city map in his memory, and neither Padmé nor Sabé want to attract the wrong kind of attention if they add “lost” to “conventionally attractive human females with human babies” in the seedier areas of the city.

It’s odd, in the unsettling double-vision way of déjà-vu, to be winding through the subterranean halls of the city on what could be generously termed a diplomatic mission. Padmé, of course, has attended and led innumerable diplomatic missions, and in the course of these missions she has often found herself fleeing through urban scenes she would never have otherwise seen, but to commence negotiations not in the seat of government or in the household of an ally but in alcohol-soured and dimly lit cantinas is bizarre.

Oddly enough, it puts her in mind of Tatooine, trying fiercely to keep up with Qui-Gon’s ground-eating strides as he confidently navigated a criminal empire. The memory aches a little, like a fading bruise, chagrin at her petulance and regret at his passing, but it’s a sweet kind of ache. Padmé no longer carries the weight of Qui-Gon’s death, as she had those next few years as Queen.

Sabé selects a curtained booth in the back, and spends a good five minutes adjusting and readjusting the curtain until she can see through it to the entrance without being seen too much in return. Padmé settles into the corner, Leia scowling awake at her front, and waits for Artoo to return with food and tea.

“I wonder if it was right to send him alone,” Padmé says after a minute. Sabé looks at her inquiringly, nodding a question to where Artoo is making his arduous journey back. Padmé shakes her head.

“Ah,” Sabé realizes. A conversation passes between them with a look. “You're right; we must work better at looking out for one another.”

It’s so like the old days on Naboo, when Sabé wore the Queen’s robes and scar of remembrance and Padmé guided her to the Queen’s action with a glance, a barely perceptible nod, a carefully worded phrase of command disguised as reassurance. Padmé is positively giddy with it, and she grins at Sabé, bright and unguarded in the dim cantina. Sabé grins back.

Of course, none of them are safe; it would have been wrong to send Padmé or Sabé alone, but Obi-Wan bears the double burden of being close to Anakin and having survived the purge. Arguably, he is in more danger than they are, and if it weren’t for the twins, perhaps Sabé would have arranged the meeting while Obi-Wan and Padmé sat quietly in a cantina. But the twins are here, and must be protected, and as long as Sabé can nurse, they cannot afford to lose her.

And Obi-Wan was a general and Jedi Master, Padmé reminds herself; he is both accustomed to and capable of completing missions like this. Yet the promise of loyal egalitarianism ghosts past her at the thought. She promised to be their equal, to share responsibilities and missions and burdens evenly among them, but she is too accustomed to being served so that she can serve some greater thing. Her handmaidens, Anakin, even the Jedi to some extent, all did the dirty work, the cooking and cleaning and protecting and arranging so that she could free her mind for her people, for the Galaxy, for peace.

Sabé nudges Padmé's foot with her own beneath the table. “You look strange, my dear. Are you well?”

“I think,” Padmé says with some shock, “that I am spoiled.”

Sabé looks at her with deep fondness. “You can wash the dishes, then.”

Padmé laughs, unable to help it, and Sabé grins back at her.

 

 

Obi-Wan follows Tion Medon into their booth not twenty minutes later. “Ladies,” he says, a short bow. “Tion — you remember Padmé. And this is Sabé.”

Tion Medon bows gravely. “It is a great pleasure to see you again. I am glad that you have managed to stay safe. But I cannot understand what brings you here.”

The three of them exchange quick glances. “Surely,” Padmé says delicately, “a new mother is entitled to solicit well-wishes from her allies.”

Tion Medon leans toward her, his teeth sharp, his eyes unreadably black. “Do not attempt to play my planet’s culture against me, Senator. I am grateful for the help you afforded us during the wars, but these are uncertain and perilous times. Has my city not suffered enough? And you — you claim to be my allies, my friends, but you endanger me simply by being in the same system! I cannot countenance such hypocrisy!”

“If I may respond,” Padmé says, measured and calm, “point by point, Tion. These are indeed perilous and uncertain times. I cannot refute that, and I have too much respect for you to speak a lie. And in such times, is it not better to have as many allies as possible? Is it not more secure to have friends capable of delivering who owe you a favour? 

“Your next point: Pau City has suffered enough. So has Utapau, the system, and the entire galaxy due to wars orchestrated by a power-hungry Sith Lord intent on destroying democracy. If he faces no resistance, things will only get worse, and quickly.

“Regarding our endangerment of you: it is a risk to us all. You could be seen as guilty just for meeting with us, it is true, but we risk more in coming to you at all. I imagine we are all on the Emperor’s most wanted list. Had we any sense of self-interest, we would have vanished already. I see no hypocrisy in our actions. But I do find hypocrisy in the reluctance of someone to help those who have sacrificed much to help him time and again.”

It’s exhilarating to be in her element again, to grasp and understand the problem and know with absolute clarity that it is one she can solve on her own. Ancestors, how she’s missed the power of a solid argument.

At her side, Sabé is smiling with quiet pride at Luke, while Obi-Wan looks brightly from Padmé to Tion Medon, practically beaming at them. They've all needed this, Padmé realizes, all needed a task with a defined goal and steps to achieve it, something that can build into the next endeavour. 

Tion Medon stares at her, looking around to Obi-Wan. “You are just as persuasive as I remember,” he says gravely. He’s not happy about it. But he won't turn them down, either, and sure enough: “What is it that you need?”

Obi-Wan leans over. “You've been given a copy of the Empire’s most wanted list,” he says. “There are surviving Jedi on that list.”

Tion Medon inhales sharply. 

“That’s all we want,” Padmé says gently. “And then we’ll be gone.”

His long-fingered hands emerge from his sleeves. “This I can do for you. Come here, droid.” He beckons imperiously.

Artoo beeps indignantly, but goes to Tion and accepts the datastick offered.

“Now,” Tion says, “get off the planet. I pray we do not meet again.”

Obi-Wan stands, looking at him curiously. “You were always going to give us the names.”

The Pau’an shrugs. “I was not happy to have been asked. But it was the least I could do, and the easiest means of speeding you on your way.”

“Of course,” Sabé says drily. 

Padmé bows. “Thank you, Tion.”

Tion Medon sweeps out of the booth with regal deliberation; he’s barely gone before the three of them are on the move, leaving credits for the meal on the table and slipping out the back door, heading to the ship.

 

 

In the ship, there’s a brief and vibrant flurry of exultation between them: Obi-Wan sweeps Padmé into his arms tightly, _thank you_ a fierce whisper in her ear as Leia scowls at them both. Sabé hands Luke off to Obi-Wan with a hug, and kisses Padmé on the cheek. “I’ll start preflight checks,” Sabé says. “You pick our destination.”

As Sabé pilots them from the surface, Obi-Wan and Padmé look over the list. It is painfully short. _Yoda. Obi-Wan Kenobi. Shaak Ti. Luminara Unduli. Ahsoka Tano. Barriss Offee. Uvell. Zubain Ankonori. Mususiel. Khandra. Nuhj._

There’s relief, immediately, at the sight of Ahsoka’s name; she must be alive, still. And anger, of course, at Barriss, who survives when so many more deserving have died. But staring at the names, only nine to be found, Padmé’s heart breaks. _So few._

For the first time, she sympathizes with Yoda’s demand to raise the twins himself. Her decision is the same, and will be as long as possible, but she understands him better now.

Obi-Wan peers over her shoulder, expression inscrutable as he traces a calloused finger down the list. “Luminara was at Kashyyyk,” he says quietly.

Sabé, coming in from the cockpit, frowns. “Isn't that where Yoda was?”

Fury flares up in Padmé's blood. “To Kashyyyk, then.”

 

 

In the cockpit, Obi-Wan pours over galactic charts. “We’ll have to be careful,” he says, not looking up as Padmé settles in the copilot’s seat, Luke gurgling happily in her lap. 

“We’re avoiding major hyperspace lanes, I presume,” Padmé says. She bounces Luke gently and smiles brightly at him. “Hey there,” she croons at him, “you were so good today. You were so brave, coming onto a strange planet and into stinky cantinas with your sister and Artoo and Sabé.”

“What am I, bantha poodoo?” Obi-Wan mutters.

“And Obi-Wan,” Padmé amends indulgently.

He leans back, watching her and Luke’s gleeful giggles. “You’re in a good mood.”

Padmé considers. “I have never liked…waiting to act,” she says slowly. “Today, for the first time in almost three years, I felt like I could make a difference, like the problem in front of me had a clear solution and I could achieve that solution. It’s liberating.”

There’s a soft, fond look in Obi-Wan’s eyes as he gazes at her. “How you ever lasted as a politician is beyond me.” He reaches toward Luke, and Padmé surrenders him graciously. 

“Your Uncle Obi-Wan,” she whispers at Luke, smiling. She looks up at Obi-Wan when his hands still, Luke frozen and blinking bemusedly between them. Obi-Wan’s looking at her, unmoving, eyes bright. The edge of his mouth trembles.

Padmé holds his gaze. “Or,” she says, very soft, “your father, if he would like that.”

Carefully, holding her son as though he were infinitely precious, Obi-Wan cradles Luke against his chest. “Uncle, I think, will do quite well.” His voice is rough; on impulse, Padmé leans over and kisses his cheek. 

“I’ll check on Sabé and Leia,” she whispers, and slips away.

 

 

In the mess, Sabé is cooking something pungent while Threepio stands in the corner, a well-padded Leia in a harness on his torso. 

“Miss Sabé,” he says, “I really must protest these arrangements.”

“Must you?” Sabé shoots back teasingly. She winks at Padmé.

“Why, yes! I am not programmed for infant care, nor am I designed with their comfort in mind!”

“Hence the pillow on your front, my dear,” Sabé says.

“Miss Leia is no happier about our arrangement, I assure you,” Threepio sniffs. “She has a most somber expression and has wiped her hands on my photoreceptors no less than three times. I shall be blind as a space slug if she persists in this attack on my person!”

Padmé, taking pity, wipes Threepio’s photoreceptors with a cloth. “Leia didn’t mean it,” she reminds him. “She’s still learning about the world. She’ll make mistakes. I’m sure she was just curious. And I think you're doing marvellously, Threepio, as a nanny. I feel very secure leaving my children in your care.”

This is not entirely true; Threepio’s nerves have been more active than usual, and were they to be boarded or cornered by Imperials, he’s the last member of the crew she’d trust to protect the twins effectively. But since Anakin gifted her the droid, Padmé’s learned to manage him through a careful combination of reassurance and praise, appeasing his insecurity and his need to be useful. She can certainly empathize with the latter.

In any case, the words have their desired effect. Threepio bends awkwardly to look Leia in the eye. “Miss Leia, we must come to an accord for your mother’s sake,” he says. “We must not distress her with reports of your impudence.”

Padmé stifles a laugh.

“I think talking to her will help, Threepio,” Sabé interjects. “She’ll see you less as an object and more as a person, especially if you respond to her.”

“I shall do my best, Miss Sabé,” Threepio says, long-suffering.

“And I should warn you, Threepio,” Padmé adds, “that I was something of an impudent child — as was Anakin, if you recall. I have no doubt that Leia and Luke have inherited some measure of that.”

“Maker have mercy,” Threepio wails. 

 

 

Obi-Wan ducks into the mess to return Luke, collect Artoo, and sketch out a plan for their travel. “We’ll keep exclusively to the Outer Rim,” he says. “We can’t risk major hyperlanes; the risk of Imperial surveillance is too great. So we’ll be dropping in and out for about a week.”

“Kashyyyk is two weeks of travel, calculating optimistically,” Sabé frowns. “What makes you think we’ll make it in a week?”

Obi-Wan hesitates. “Kamino is not out of our way,” he says.

“You want to investigate the clones,” Padmé says quietly. 

“I do,” he says. “But I have a feeling that someone else is already doing that.”

Padmé frowns at him. 

“A Force feeling,” he clarifies, looking a bit embarrassed; he knows her too well. 

“So a week to Kamino,” Sabé says slowly, “maybe more, with our jumps. And then another week to Kashyyyk. Do you think Luminara Unduli will remain on Kashyyyk that long?”

“I do not know,” Obi-Wan says honestly. “But we will know where to start.”

 

 

Later, as the ship slips through hyperspace along the carefully plotted route Obi-Wan and Artoo had spent the better part of the day finalizing, Sabé trails a hand down Padmé's arm, expression open, curious.

“I never would have described you as an impudent child.” There’s a question in her words. “Nor Anakin, when we first met him.”

Padmé smiles softly, donning her nightdress and pulling back the blankets on their bed. “Neither of us had much of a childhood,” she says thoughtfully. “I think we weren’t really children until we met again and stayed on Naboo. There were no expectations on us then. It was…liberating. Exhilarating. And there was plenty of impudence between us, I assure you.”

Sabé’s looking at her, warm, tender, as she dims the lights. “It is so easy,” she whispers, crawling beneath the covers, “to see how you love him.”

Padmé’s heart stutters in her chest. “I wish I didn't,” she says quietly. She shifts, turning over to face the wall; Sabé follows her, arm a comforting weight on her waist.

“I know,” Sabé says, soft. Her hand, splayed open, rubs soothingly over Padmé’s belly. 

In the dark, the only hint of Sabé's presence the warmth of the bed, Padmé whispers, “—do you blame me for it?”

“What—?” Sabé sits up, pulling at Padmé's shoulder. “Padmé. Of course I don’t.”

“I blame myself,” she whispers.

Sabé eases down next to her. “Dormé and I spoke of this, when we first learned of your marriage. And again on Polis Massa.”

Padmé holds her breath. 

“Dormé said that she had never been easy with your love of him, but she could not conceive of a galaxy in which you did not love him — not because of anything Anakin was or did, but because you cannot help but love. He was handsome and brave and in love with you, and that certainly helped, but you, Padmé, you cannot see someone in pain without trying to relieve their suffering. You carry the Galaxy on your shoulders.”

Padmé presses the heels of her hands to her eyes, willing the tears not to fall. “What arrogance that is. What hubris.”

“Yes,” Sabé agrees gently. “None could accuse you of humility, but there is no room for it in you. Too much responsibility, too much generosity, too much truth for humility to find a space in you too. None of us are perfect, Padmé. The waters shaped us and the ancestors blessed us, but neither is infallible, and so neither can we be. We can only bear our burdens with grace.”

Padmé chokes out a laugh. “I cannot even manage that well.”

“You’ve endured more than most,” Sabé acknowledges. “But if you truly wish to carry this burden well, to give back to the Galaxy that has not only spared your life but those of your children, then your time could be better spent.” She touches Padmé’s cheek, light and quick. “Guilt will not serve you or your family or your cause, Padmé.”

Padmé catches her hand, holds it to her cheek. “I have not been the friend you deserve.”

“Be better,” Sabé tells her.

Hesitantly, she says, “I have not been the _partner_ you deserve.”

Sabé strokes her hair. “I am in no hurry, my love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so not much happens except Emotions but that's the kind of fic this is, friends. action next chapter when we return to dormé and ahsoka and barriss and mace! 
> 
> in Other News, you may have noticed that this is part one of a series.....STAY TUNED, SPACE FRIENDS. welcome new readers, welcome back folks, join me in the comments for conflicting feelings about Padmé and arrogance and responsibility and most importantly, Gay Handmaidens and Space Families,


	7. seven: barriss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barriss looks away; she rubs her hand over her insensate arm. Mirial is cold, but she feels colder in this room than she ever did there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: depression, suicidal ideation. Let me know if I should warn for more. Be safe, friends.

 

 

This is the way the world ends:

A youngling with blood on their hands. A child-Queen exchanging her throne for a blaster. A Chancellor’s stupid, calculated obstinance. Peace wrested from resistance by a lightsaber.

A failure to listen. A bomb burst too soon. Something fragile and necessary fracturing in the Force.

Ahsoka, small and brave and innocent of this, at least, on trial for Barriss’ failures.

 

 

“Hey.”

Barriss looks up. Ahsoka’s awake, blinking at her, expression shuttered. 

“How’s your arm?”

She looks at the limb contemplatively. After she’d stabilized Master Windu, she’d performed only the most perfunctory care — a pain reliever, a splint, a salve, a sling.

“It is no matter,” Barriss says brusquely. It doesn’t matter. Mace Windu will kill her as soon as he rouses, she’s sure of it. Why Ahsoka hasn’t is, frankly, a mystery.

“Let me see.” Ahsoka reaches for her with the intimate familiarity of comrades, of soldiers, seeking tactile reassurance of the other’s safety, offering the tender assurance of touch. 

Barriss can’t bear the thought of Ahsoka touching her, let alone touching her kindly. She flinches away. “I said it is no matter.”

Ahsoka’s hand drops. “I’ll find us some food,” she says, subdued, and slips out of the medbay.

 

 

She’s not — she’s not alright. Barriss knows enough medicine and knows herself well enough to know this. Something in her was ruined by the trial, by the imprisonment, by her own guilt for Ahsoka. She is not safe in her own body.

It’s difficult to articulate this lack of security. Every time she tries, she sounds insane, even to herself. _There is duracrete in my veins where blood should be. There is pourstone in my lungs where air should be. There is nothing where my heart should be but emptiness and I only feel myself when it hurts._

It’s not poetry, it’s not metaphor or simile. In the moment, the worst of it, it’s her experience. She is not blood and breath and beating heart but stone, insensible to the Force but for a dim, dull awareness that there is something beyond her that used to be part of her, and is no longer.

Barriss is not safe in her body, and she is not safe from her brain, that miraculous organ Master Unduli had praised so sincerely. Where once her mind gave her holographic memory, where once she could learn complex algorithms and memorize labyrinthine blueprints in less than an hour, now her brain lies to her. Her brain tells her things that are not true. Her brain wants her dead.

It’s hard to find reasons to disagree.

 

 

Ahsoka returns a little while later, tossing a ration pack at her. “’S’all I could find,” she says, and heads towards Windu. “D’you know when he’ll wake up?”

“Soon,” Barriss says. “I’m sure you’ll know before I do. With your enhanced Force sensitivity.”

Ahsoka looks at her, a little cautious, a little curious. “It’s gone, you know.”

Barriss tilts her head, inviting her to continue. 

“It had things for me to do.” Ahsoka shrugs, lekku stirring on her shoulders. “Find Master Windu. Get you. The Force guided me. I think it’s got other stuff going on now, though. I think we’re okay for a while.”

Barriss stares at her.

“I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed, actually,” Ahsoka says. Her eyes see entirely too much.

Barriss looks away; she rubs her hand over her insensate arm. Mirial is cold, but she feels colder in this room than she ever did there. 

 

 

This is how her brain lies to her:

She wakes. It’s dark. She’s in the cell in the Detention Centre that’s been hers alone for more than a year. She has not spoken in that time except to call tentatively for the comfort of the Force. But there is no answer. There will never be an answer.

In the dark, Ahsoka’s eyes burn like fire.

 

 

At length, Mace Windu stirs. Automatically, though staying back and beyond his notice might be more prudent for her own survival, Barriss moves to his side. She checks his vitals. His pulse is weaker than she’d like, and his bones are still knitting together, and his weapon hand is free of infection, miraculously, but he’s still not fully recovered. 

He squints at her dubiously. “This can’t be real,” he says, and then goes back to sleep.

A concussion, perhaps? She should wake him up. But it’s tempting for a host of reasons to let him slumber on. He shouldn't have to face the horrors of their new world yet, and if he’s able to believe that this isn’t real, all the better. 

And, with a tiny, grudging selfishness she thought she’d long outgrown, Barriss realizes she doesn’t want this to end, not yet. Of all the ways her mind and perceptions have betrayed her, of all the ways she’s died, this is not the worst.

At least here she gets to be of use before she dies.

 

 

She’s lost count of the number of times she’s died, the number of times her brain has tried to kill her. Being on guard against oneself is exhausting enough without keeping meticulous records, and it’s not like she had any kind of motivation to note every hallucination and delusion and dream and fantasy of the past year and a half. 

The first time is hard to forget for two reasons: it was the first, and it was the worst.

She’d been a week into her imprisonment. The dim-lit dark pressed down on her like stone. The Force slipped from her seeking reach like oil. There were dampeners at her cell, she knows this now, but the elusiveness of the Force, despite her affinity for it, despite her training and the endless hours of meditation, spoke of something more than technology confining her. 

She’d opened her eyes after hours of silent, desperate reaching, and stared into the dark, unable to move even had she wanted to. Ahsoka stood in the doorway, watching her.

Barris knew in that moment that she was doomed. Ahsoka looked at her, eyes clear and blue like the ice on Ilum. Her face was stone-hard, like in battle, but there was something unsettling and unfamiliar about her expression.

Cautiously, Barriss stood. “Ahsoka,” she’d whispered into the dark, and Ahsoka had gone to her quickly, hand to Barriss’ veiled throat, and said, “You know why I’m here.”

Under the heat of Ahsoka’s hand, Barriss’ voice rasped. “Revenge is not the Jedi way,” a reminder, a prayer, a plea.

The lightsaber ignited in her chest, setting fire to her bones. Ahsoka’s eyes did not change. “It is now,” she said.

 

 

There have been other variations on this theme, of course: Ahsoka weeping as the blade crackles in Barriss’ breast, Ahsoka a prisoner in the cell with her, Ahsoka with eyes burning gold like fire even before a red lightsaber ignites between them. 

Barriss prefers these variations. Ahsoka is honourable and loyal; she would not betray a code to which she pledged herself. If she left the Order, if she became a Sith, she would at least be acting in accordance with that honour. But Ahsoka as a Jedi, comfortable with the murder of a former friend for the sake of revenge, epitomizes the fall of the Order, the failure of Barriss’ warning. It is the worst thing she can possibly imagine.

Which means, of course, that she cannot escape it. 

 

 

Barriss stands abruptly. “You’ll stay with him,” she says.

Ahsoka looks up, surprise warring with wariness on her face. “Where are you going?”

“Not far.” There’s no point in running, anyway; her guilt will catch up with her with a vengeance soon, and then it’s just a matter of time until the next death. Hells, she’s probably dead already and trapped in a purgatory rather than released back into the Force. The Jedi don’t teach that, but the Dathomir witches do, and older sects of Force-sensitive Mirialans believed the same. Stranger things have happened. 

Ahsoka is still uneasy, if the tension in her shoulders is anything to go by. Her eyes flit from Windu to Barriss and back.

Suddenly tired, Barriss snaps. “Don’t worry. I won’t change the script. You can kill me when I get back.”

“Barriss—” Ahsoka says, horrified, but Barriss doesn’t pause, doesn’t stay, just makes for the Archives and leaves her standing, small and alone, in the medbay’s cold light.

Barriss tells herself she doesn’t feel guilty, but for once, her brain refuses a lie.

 

 

For a long moment, she just stands in the entrance to the Archives, at an utter loss. There are bodies between the stacks, on the hallways leading up to the Archives, painfully small and unmoving. The Temple was never exactly loud, but with thousands of residents it couldn’t claim to be entirely quiet, either. In this light, the silence is its own kind of death. 

Barriss ignores them as best she can. She and Ahsoka talked about it briefly — they cannot betray their presence here by disturbing the carnage nor by disrupting the Force-carried horror that emanates from their slaughtered siblings. But it’s hard. Of course it’s hard. The smell makes her gag. The sight makes her weep. The silence brings her to her knees, where her mind wonders if she would not be better off dead in the Force with the rest of the Jedi.

Barriss shakes her head to clear it. Ahsoka or Mace Windu will kill her soon enough. In the meantime, she can mourn Jocasta Nu in the library to which she dedicated her life, and attempt to honour that dedication. 

 

 

It’s not only or always Ahsoka who kills her. She prefers it, most times, because — because. But she’s died at the hands of others, too. Master Skywalker, hate like molten rock in his eyes. Master Kenobi, face scarred by grief, wondering where he went wrong. Yoda and Windu and the Council, looking down on her with impassive, impersonal disappointment, indifferent to her pleas.

Master Unduli, expression closed, turning her back on Barriss, leaving the cell and throwing away the key. 

Like she said. She prefers it when Ahsoka kills her.

 

 

Eventually, Barriss returns to the medbay. Mace Windu is still asleep; Ahsoka is tinkering with something on one of the cots. 

“Thermal scanner,” she says briefly, when Barriss asks. “So that we’ll have warning if someone comes here.”

Her voice is tight, constricted; Barriss realizes the reason in seconds. 

“Your master taught you that,” she says hesitantly. 

Ahsoka’s quiet for a moment. “Yes.”

Barriss shivers. Something about this isn’t right. Her delusions, her hallucinations usually don’t involve the effects of people other than Barriss. When Ahsoka kills her, it’s because of Barriss’ betrayal; when she’s angry, hateful, grieving, it’s for the same reason. But never since her crime and incarceration have any of her killers worn a grief she has not herself inflicted. That Ahsoka does so now means something has changed, and Barriss isn’t quite brave enough to follow that logic to its conclusion. 

“C’mon,” she says abruptly, “I need your help in the Archives.”

Ahsoka wipes her cheeks and follows. 

 

 

For that week, whenever Windu sleeps, Ahoska and Barriss go to the Archives to cull the most necessary texts from the shelves. “Take only what we can carry,” Barriss had said, and Ahsoka had nodded. “Take only what we can’t replace.”

There’s an ache in her breast at this, remembering all her years of study, the datapads and holograms that taught her and refined her, that she had deemed essential to her becoming a Jedi, crucial to her very selfhood. But now — 

Ahsoka touches her shoulder gently. “We need to make sure something survives.”

This is catastrophe. This is apocalypse. What survives is never as important as what doesn’t.

When they’re not in the Archives, Barriss hands out rations, and Ahsoka sits with her. They both avoid Mace Windu, and he, for the most part, ignores them. Barriss wants to be surprised by this, or hurt, to feel something, but she and Ahsoka are both traitors. Barriss was expelled from the Order, but Ahsoka left it of her own free will. She can’t imagine Mace’s anger, disappointment, humiliation, but then, she doesn’t need too; he’s not keeping his emotions well-regulated, so it’s obvious that they’re the last two people in the galaxy that he wants to see.

Fitting him with a prosthetic is unmanageable with only one uninjured hand of her own, so Ahsoka does most of the hands-on work, her mechanic’s instinct guiding her when Barriss can’t. Mace sits, stone-faced and silent, speaking only to confirm his responsiveness to the prosthetic. 

Once, returning to the medbay after a few solitary hours in the Archives, Barriss stops at the door, just out of sight. Someone had said her name. She listens, closely. 

“—understand,” Mace says, “but it is unwise to—” He pauses; if she had to guess, Barriss would think he’s struggling to phrase this as inoffensively as possible. 

“You can’t trust her,” he says at last.

There’s silence. Then, Ahsoka, high and incredulous: “But I can trust you?”

Another pause. “Of _course_ you can,” Mace says, as though it should be obvious, as though Ahsoka is a fool for not knowing this.

“Why?” Ahsoka demands. “You didn’t trust me. You _betrayed_ me. You thought I was a traitor. And—” Her voice turns accusing. “—and you _still_ don’t trust me.”

“Barriss Offee is an ideological terrorist,” Mace snaps, “responsible for the deaths of—”

“We’re _all responsible for death!”_ Ahsoka shouts. “All of us! At least Barriss was trying to save us from ourselves! I’m not saying she was right, but at least she was trying to stop the war! She was the _only one_ trying to stop it! And she was right! She was right that the Jedi lost their way, she was right that you can’t keep peace through war, she was right that the kriffing Council couldn’t kriffing protect _anyone—”_

There’s a sob, stifled as though behind a hand, and Barriss presses instinctively back into the shadows as Ahsoka runs past, tears streaming down her cheeks.

After a few minutes, Barriss enters the medbay, expression as blank as she can make it. Mace doesn’t acknowledge her, but he’s acutely aware of her every movement, she knows; she can feel him watching her through the Force. She goes to the datapad on the cot she’s been using and makes a few notes about the selections from the Archives, and then sets it down. Deliberately, she walks directly to Mace.

He looks up at her, obstinate and unwelcoming. She doesn’t care. 

“She’s saved your life twice now,” Barriss says very softly. “If you hurt her again, I wonder if she’ll care enough to save you from me.”

Mace says nothing, and Barriss, knowing all too well where her faith lies, goes to find Ahsoka. 

 

 

She finds Ahsoka eventually in the Knights’ barracks, curled underneath Anakin Skywalker’s junk-ridden table, staring unseeingly into the distance.

Barriss sits off to the side — within Ahsoka’s field of vision, but not demandingly so. Offering, not taking. It’s all she has the right to do.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

For several minutes, Ahsoka says nothing. Then: “You heard.”

“It was not my intention.”

“I didn’t think it was.”

They lapse back into silence.

Eventually, Barriss asks, tentative and unsure, “Have you heard anything from him?”

It’s impossible to mistake her meaning. They’re in his room.

Ahsoka swallows. The silence seeps, leaden, into Barriss’ bones. “I felt him die,” Ahsoka whispers. 

It would have been easier had she been split in two, Barriss thinks; the anguish in Ahsoka’s voice is worse than a thousand deaths, and Barriss would know. Her life means too little to her to serve as a bargaining chip, but Barriss would give — she’d give anything at all to ease Ahsoka’s pain.

She shifts closer, just a little, offering. “I’m sorry.”

Ahsoka’s quiet. “Luminara?”

There’s a stone in her throat. “I have no idea.” She feels Ahsoka’s questioning gaze on her. “She severed our training bond as soon as the Trials were complete. I haven’t had a connection with her in years.”

At length, Ahsoka says, “I kept waiting for him to sever it. For a while, I was so sure he would, or that he had and I didn’t even notice, because — look. He was a good Knight and the best of masters. But he could be angry and thoughtless and rash, too.”

“I remember,” Barriss says dryly, and Ahsoka huffs a laugh.

“But he never did,” she says softly. “I should’ve known he never would. Obi-Wan never severed their bond, either, and he cared about me. If he thought there was ever even a chance that I’d use the bond, he’d preserve it. And he did.”

“He was a good man,” Barriss says. 

“You didn’t like him.”

“He wasn’t my master. I didn’t have to.”

“Thanks,” Ahsoka says quietly. And then, soft as a summer breeze on Naboo, she asks, “Could you — could you just come here and hold me, for a little while.”

Wordlessly, Barriss settles next to her. It’s cramped under the table, in the disarray of Anakin Skywalker’s disassembled mechanics, but Ahsoka turns her face into Barriss’ shoulder immediately, tucking herself close, and Barriss holds her, arm slung like a cradle around Ahsoka’s lekku.

 

 

Barriss wakes up. Her heart is racing. Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.

Beside her, Ahsoka is bent over something that glows faintly in the dark. It’s the thermal scanner. 

“Someone’s in the Temple,” Ahsoka says quietly.

That’s not the problem. It’s _a_ problem, but not what woke her.

“Get back to the medbay,” Ahsoka orders. “Mace can’t move on his own yet. I’ll go see what’s going on.”

“Ahsoka,” Barriss whispers.

 _“Go,”_ Ahsoka hisses, and slips away from her.

For a moment, Barriss sits, frozen, and then she rouses herself into action. Silent as a shadow, she runs back to the medbay, senses attuned to Ahsoka, to the unknown presence moving among them. It’s not a clone, she can tell that much, but beyond that, there’s no telling. 

Mace is already trying to stand by the time she gets to him. “Stop,” she orders, “you’ll damage the fractures—” Nearly every bone in his body was broken when Barriss finally began to treat him; it’s only thanks to the Force that he’s even moving, that his organs survived without rupture. He shouldn’t be moving under any circumstances, but the Galaxy has been unkind to the Jedi.

She ducks under his arm, ignoring his flinch of aversion, and steadies him with her body and what little Force-energy she can summon. “The closet,” she whispers, “let’s go—”

Mace grunts. “My lightsaber—”

“I have it.”

“Give it to me.”

She looks at him askance. “You can’t even stand. You're in no position to duel.”

They reach the closet; carefully, Barriss deposits him on a trunk and pulls the door closed after them. He sags against the wall, sweat pearling on his brow. 

Silence falls. They wait, breath caught in their throats, as Barriss strains to catch a hint of Ahsoka’s presence through the Force. The intruder moves through training rooms and into the mess halls, on the other side of the Temple. Barriss makes a decision. 

She ducks out of the closet long enough to find a lightsaber and a blaster, pulling each from the body of its bearer, eyes squeezed shut against this petty sacrilege. She gives the blaster to Mace and returns his lightsaber, tucking the abandoned one up her sleeve. “I’ll do my best to hold them off,” she whispers, “but just in case—”

She feels his mind brush against hers warily. “Why?”

It’s such a stupid question. There are too many answers. Because Mace can’t fight, and she needs to protect them. Because Ahsoka saved Barriss so Barriss could save Mace. Because she feels guilty and lost and at least in this moment she has a purpose. Because none of this is real and it doesn’t matter, anyway.

They’re all true. But the answer she gives him is entirely different. “We’re Jedi,” she says, hoping he can’t sense the wound in her voice. “Or at least, we’re what’s left of the Jedi. We can’t afford to lose anyone.”

Swiftly, determined not to allow him an opportunity to remind her just how far from a Jedi she is, Barriss slips out of the closet and past the medbay doors. There’s an alcove ahead, like the one in which she’d hidden when Ahsoka fled to Anakin Skywalker’s chambers, that will do as she waits for Ahsoka or the intruder. 

The stolen lightsaber shivers against her skin, the death of its maker a stain in the Force. Barriss shudders, and then—

She had slept. That was what had woken her with its wrongness. She never sleeps in her death-dreams. She slept, and that means that this is real. The Jedi are dead, the Republic has fallen, and everything is real.

Oddly, the realization doesn’t panic her; rather, for the first time since before the wars, Barriss feels light, calm; at peace. Easily as breathing, she releases herself, her fears and her hurt and her dull, amorphous longings, into the warmth of the Force. For so long an elusive and unwilling companion, the Force wraps around her with all the comfort of an old friend. A tear tracks down her tattooed cheek. 

They are the last Jedi. If Ahsoka fails, Barriss, with her lame arm and stolen lightsaber, will be all that stands between death and Mace Windu. She is all that stands against the eradication of the Jedi Order.

Once, she might have abandoned the Order to its fate without regret. But now, in this moment, she will give herself to protect it: its loyalty, its compassion, its serenity, its wisdom. The Order lost its way, but there was good in it. There is still good in it. And Barriss is Jedi, and Jedi sacrifice for their faith.

Barriss closes her eyes, gives herself over to the Force, and waits.

 

 

She opens her eyes. Listens. There’s the ever-present roar of Coruscant. The quiet thrum of the sewage flowing from the Temple. The muffled chatter of the clones stationed at the perimeter. And Ahsoka, bright like a flame, a candle in the dark, coming toward her with the intruder.

Barriss holds her breath, straining for any sign of distress, of coercion, of fear, but Ahsoka — she’s relieved, giddy even, bubbly with it, and so Barriss, thanking the Force that she has not had to fight, moves from her alcove to greet her.

“Barriss!” Ahsoka cries, jogging to her. “Barriss, we’re going to be okay—” She gestures to the human woman behind her. “This is Dormé, and she’s here to rescue us.”

Barriss looks Dormé up and down. She’s of average height — taller than Barriss and Ahsoka both — with dark brown hair, pale skin, soft brown eyes. Her expression is reserved, but Barriss thinks that this, somehow, was not what she was expecting.

To Ahsoka, Barriss says, “I need your help with Mace.”

Ahsoka blanches. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing more than usual, if we’re lucky,” Barriss says grimly. “But I hid him in a closet and I want to get him back to bed. Use the Force, Tano.”

Dormé looks between them. “Mace Windu?”

Ahsoka nods eagerly. “The Force led me to him—”

Dormé turns to Barriss. “If there’s a stretcher, put him on that. We cannot afford to linger here.”

“How are we going to get out?” Barriss holds her ground, chin raised. If Ahsoka won’t ask the important questions, she sure as Sith hells will.

“How did you get in?”

“Waste tunnel,” Ahsoka says with pride.

Dormé’s expression does not flicker. “Can we get a mid-size Nubian yacht by the entrance?”

“Oh, sure,” Ahsoka says comfortably, “s’long as you’ve got a good pilot. We got the _Twilight_ down there once, just to see if we could.”

Drily, Barriss says, “It would be easier to get a Republic cruiser into tight quarters than the _Twilight._ That ship was a nightmare.”

“My point exactly,” Ahsoka says, grinning. 

Dormé nods once. “I’ll arrange it. Prepare Master Windu.”

Between her and Ahsoka, they manage to lift Mace from his slump in the closet and levitate him to a medicapsule. In the doorway, Dormé speaks quietly into a commlink. 

Barriss turns to Ahsoka. Mace, thankfully, is unconscious, and thus can’t intervene to turn them against one another. 

“Ahsoka,” Barriss whispers, “who is she?”

Ahsoka leans in. “One of Padmé Amidala’s handmaidens. Padmé sent her to find us.”

“To find _you.”_

Ahsoka sets her jaw. “We can trust her.”

“And where will she bring us?”

“To Padmé,” Ahsoka says, _obviously_ unsaid but clear in her tone. “But — look, I know that none of this is real to you, Barriss, but for those of us living this life, anywhere is better than here.”

Between them, Mace groans back to consciousness.

Barriss closes her mouth and busies herself with the medical scanner, checking to make sure Mace’s fractures haven’t broken again during the move to the closet and back. By some Force-borne miracle, only his hand needs to be reset; grudgingly, he admits to falling on it awkwardly when first attempting to stand. It’s odd, this — Barriss wouldn’t go so far as to call it camaraderie, but it’s an acknowledgment between them, this confession, that things have changed since Dormé entered the Temple. They’re no longer enemies. Barriss might even characterize them as cautious allies, both suspicious of Dormé, both wary of their vulnerabilities.

After she finishes resetting his hand, Mace nods to her arm. “That doesn’t appear to be improving.”

Barriss wants to avoid his gaze, his inquiry, and if she were still certain that none of this were real, she might, but her uncertainty behooves caution. “No,” she agrees. “It isn’t.”

He looks at her, hard. “Why not?”

Barriss plucks at her sling uncomfortably. “I do not know.”

Mace frowns. She feels him, the bright violet of his Force-sense probing at her honesty, along the length of her arm, before he withdraws with alacrity.

“What’s _wrong_ with it?” There’s disgust in his voice, and fear, and revulsion, but not at her, at least she doesn’t think so. 

She turns away. “I don’t know.”

He lets her fuss with the medkit for a few moments. “Barriss.”

She looks at him.

“You saved my life,” he says grimly. “I will help you heal your arm.”

“Thank you,” Barriss whispers, and wipes her eyes once she turns away again. 

Dormé approaches them, closing the face of her commlink. “Ready?”

“Yes,” Mace says.

Barriss adjusts her veil, gathers her satchel of datapads, and follows them.

 

 

The waste tunnel, when they reach it, is thankfully empty. A week of scant usage has left it more or less dry, though it still stinks. Mace wrinkles his nose; Dormé ties her skirt up to her waist; Barriss pulls her veil over her mouth and nose. Only Ahsoka seems unfazed, but she’s been through the tunnel under much worse circumstances. 

It’s a tight fit. She, Ahsoka, and Dormé manage reasonably well, but Mace is not a small person, even when he isn’t stuck on a medicapsule. Getting him onto the ship will be difficult. 

At the end of the tunnel, Dormé stops them. “This is the best exit?” she asks Ahsoka, who nods and points to the hatch above them. 

“Alright,” Dormé murmurs, and opens her commlink. “This is Sando. You’re en route?”

“We’re in range,” a woman’s voice confirms. “Activate your tracking beacon when ready.”

“Activating,” Dormé says. Moments later, there’s the faint purr of an engine. “Let us be swift,” Dormé says, opening the hatch. 

A boarding ramp is being lowered to them. “Ahsoka first,” Dormé instructs, “then she and I will help Barriss, and then Mace. I’ll go last. Go.”

Ahsoka springs up through the hatch agilely, pulling herself onto the ramp easily. Dormé lifts Barriss by the waist, and Ahsoka pulls her up with the Force; then, she and Ahsoka use the Force to lift Mace in his capsule, and send him up the ramp. Finally, Dormé jumps to grab the lip of the hatch, and vaults up onto the ramp. “Quick!” Dormé says, a hand at their shoulders, “go!” 

Even before they finish ascending the ramp, the ship begins to move again. It had been there barely a minute in total; it’ll be away from the Temple in less. “Ahsoka,” Dormé says, “I want you to get to the hold, third hatch on the left. There are thermal shields by the hatch — get them and bring them to the medbay, this door in front of us. I’ll be in the cockpit. Hurry.”

Barriss prods Mace’s medicapsule into the medbay. Mace looks at her. “What do you make of this?” he says lowly.

“I think this is a well-timed rescue,” Barriss murmurs. “We could not have remained in the Temple indefinitely.”

“No,” he agrees, and looks around. “Barriss — I don’t have time to tell you why, but I urge you to be on your guard against Dormé.”

“I’ll tell Ahsoka,” she promises, but his eyes widen in alarm. 

“No—!” He looks furtively to the door. “Don’t tell her anything.”

She suddenly recalls his heated conversation with Ahsoka in the Temple. “Kriffing hells,” Barriss says. “You’re trying to turn us against each other.” 

“Barriss—” he tries, but she turns away. 

“Don’t talk to me,” she says coldly. “I’ll have no part in your machinations. I can’t believe I was actually starting to believe you.”

“Believe what?” Ahsoka pushes through, depositing an armful of thermal shields on the counter. 

Barriss does not even glance at Mace. “Ask _him.”_

Ahsoka turns expectantly, but then Dormé appears in the doorway, expression blank in a way that reminds Barriss of a Jedi master going into battle: giving up feeling to the sanctuary of the Force, because there is no time and no space for them right now. “Thermal shields,” Dormé orders, _“now,”_ throwing one over Mace and helping Barriss under another. “We’re hoping that we’ll manage to get off-planet without arousing suspicion, but it’s extremely unlikely. Ahsoka, there’s a gunner’s tower down the hall past the hold. If we get hit, or start taking evasive maneuvers, I need you to get to it. My sister will operate the other one. Wait for my signal before opening fire. Barriss, watch over Master Windu. Keep yourselves covered.”

She’s gone in the next second, vanishing back to the cockpit in a sweep of skirts. They’re losing altitude, but not dangerously; trying to avoid notice in the lower levels of the city, Barriss thinks, though they’re doomed to failure. There’s no way that the clones guarding the Temple won’t notice a ship leaving the Temple.

Dormé and her copilot fly dextrously through the city. So far, nothing to suggest they’ve been spotted, but that can’t be right. Their luck isn’t that good. 

The intercom chirps to life. “It’s likely we were observed,” Dormé says tersely. “We’re scheduled for departure tonight anyway, so we won’t act as though there’s anything wrong. Everyone, stay out of sight as long as you can.”

 

 

They’ve been in line at customs for hours. Barriss would sleep were she not so on edge. Mace hasn’t moved since Dormé covered him, but Ahsoka is drumming her fingers against her leg; even with the shield draped over her head, Barriss can hear it. “What’s taking so long?” Ahsoka whispers.

“We do not have military clearance, Ahsoka,” Mace says gruffly. “As far as anyone is concerned, Dormé is just another Galactic citizen leaving the Empire’s capital in a time of political unrest. She has no special privileges.”

Someone enters the room. “That’s not entirely true,” a woman says, voice accented and lilting. “We have the diplomatic privileges of the Naboo Senatorial House. I’m Rabé. We’ll be viewed in a few minutes. I’m here for the thermal scan, in case they detect any strange signatures from the medbay.”

Barriss shuffles over on the bench to make room; Rabé settled between her and Ahsoka. 

“Is it likely they’ll stop us?” Barriss murmurs.

“They will try,” Rabé says gently. “But Dormé is one of Naboo’s finest pilots. She will not allow them to board the ship. Her astromech has already prepared coordinates for the jump to light speed. And Moteé is ready to take a gun if they pursue us.”

“Were you Padmé’s handmaidens too?” Ahsoka asks.

“Yes,” Rabé says. “With the Senator’s disappearance, her household has been recalled to Naboo so that the new Senator may take the apartments.”

They sit in silence. Then, Ahsoka asks hesitantly, “What will you do now that you’re — not with the Senator?”

“What I have always done,” Rabé says calmly. “I will serve my Queen.”

There’s an assurance to the way she says it, an absolute and incontrovertible faith that rankles Barriss. Mace wasn’t wrong when he called her an ideological terrorist, but he wasn’t right, either. To be an ideological terrorist, one must have an ideology, and all she had was desperate, fallible hope. Now, she does not have even that, and Rabé’s calm faith is salt in the wound, a reminder of all that she has lost and cannot regain.

Beside her, Rabé shifts; a second later, Dormé’s voice sounds between them on her comm. 

“—perial Senate business,” Dormé is saying, “conveying Senator Amidala’s household to Naboo.”

“Senator Amidala is on a no-fly list,” another, fainter voice says — the customs agent, presumably. 

“Senator Amidala is not here,” Dormé says calmly. “She has been declared missing. I am conveying her household back to Naboo that the new Senator may arrive and assume her duties as soon as may be.”

“Hold on,” the agent says, “—check that—”

They wait. Barriss’ heart pounds uncomfortably in her chest.

“Madam, a ship matching yours was seen leaving the vicinity of the Jedi Temple,” the agent says.

“I wished to see for myself the site of the betrayal,” Dormé says calmly. “My Queen requested intelligence as to recent events, and I do not wish to disappoint her.”

“Stand by for boarding,” the agent says abruptly.

“No,” Dormé says, crisp and clear, and the ship jolts forward. Rabé jumps to her feet, pulling the thermal shields off of Barriss and Ahsoka. “To the gunner’s mount, quickly,” she tells Ahsoka. “I’m needed in the cockpit.”

Mace waits until she’s gone before speaking. “Barriss. Help me get this thing off.”

She’s mature enough to help him, even if she wants to act as though he doesn’t exist. It makes her feel better, too, that she’s behaving better to him than he did to her the entire previous week. She’s no paragon of virtue, nor has she ever pretended to be. 

“Now take my hand,” he says.

Barriss sees immediately where he’s going with this: battle meditation, used to engender efficiency and enhance the reflexes of those around the meditating Jedi. “Your prosthetic won’t work for this, and your flesh hand was re-set only hours ago. Not a chance.”

Mace glowers at her. “My prosthetic _will_ work, once I've had time to practice,” he snaps, “and my flesh hand will work for now.”

“It’s _broken._ We risk permanent damage if something goes wrong.”

“So make sure it doesn’t,” he says, losing patience. “You were a skilled Jedi, Barriss. Now act like it.”

She takes his hand. Gingerly, and with silent apologies to her future self who will be resetting his bones, but she takes it. As one, they close their eyes, and sink into the Force.

For a moment, Barriss can’t breathe with the pain of it. She thought she’d become accustomed to the deadened ache of her arm, but now, her entire body feels on fire, heat screaming up from her marrow to her skin as she falls and falls and falls, knowing there is no salvation—

 _Focus,_ Mace whispers at her. He flashes around her, vibrant and violet. _You are not broken._

She’s feeling his pain, not her own. Barriss releases the sensation and opens her eyes. 

The Force, for her, has always looked like a nebula, impossible and beautiful and intangible, and that comparison does the Force no justice. Any Force user would understand her without needing the simile; non-Force sensitives dimly comprehend what they cannot experience. She stands in its centre, in the birthplace of stars, and basks in the glow as the universe turns around her.

 _Focus,_ Mace snaps. Barriss focuses. The star-stuff coalesces around her, forming four bright, distinct entities: Dormé, in front of them, Rabé at her side, a light that must be Moteé behind them, and Ahsoka: brave, brilliant Ahoska, shining brightest of all.

Mace huffs in irritation beside her. _I’ll take the front. You take the back._

Barriss drifts towards Moteé and Ahsoka. Moteé is tense, but focused, keen as a razor on her targets as she fires defensively to disable their pursuers. Ahsoka — Ahsoka is not doing well.

She’s competent, of course; she’s never been otherwise. But there’s a tremor in her aura, a shudder of fear and grief and desperation and Barriss understands suddenly why Ahsoka trusted Dormé so quickly. For the past week, Ahsoka has been the caregiver, the peace-keeper, the provider. She nursed Mace back to consciousness, and led Barriss back from the edge of insanity. She found food and water, curated millennia of Jedi lore over the bodies of her fallen brethren, and protected them, guarded them, kept them safe. She rescued them both. But no one rescued Ahsoka. No one has ever rescued Ahsoka. 

Around Barriss, the Force pulses like a heartbeat, radiating warmth. She moves to Ahsoka, to that fragile cohesion of star-stuff in the nebula of her mind, and, with everything she has to give and the bitter knowledge of what she cannot offer, Barriss curls around Ahsoka, suffusing their connection with protection, focus, safety, and — and love. Of course, love. Always, love.

Deep in Barriss, something breaks. Unlocks. Opens. The Force sings around her with terrible joy, and holds her in its womb, gathered close with Ahsoka and Mace, Dormé and Rabé and Moteé, with the Imperial pilots and bystanders, the vast roar of Coruscant like an endless sea beneath them, the Galaxy spun out around them with each life a star, impossibly, beautifully, awesomely radiant. 

The Force sings, the universe turns. Barriss loses.

 

 

She comes back to consciousness slowly, vaguely aware of the hum of hyperspace beyond the ship’s hull, of being sprawled uncomfortably on the medbay floor. Mace is pushing himself haltingly up. “Barriss,” he says.

Barriss scrambles to her feet. “Lay down! What are you doing—?”

“We’re okay,” he says, as she helps him settle back onto the medicapsule. “Hyperspace.”

“I gathered,” she says drily. “When?”

“Only a minute. You woke up right away. I’m not sure when you fell.”

“It worked, though?” The mediation must have worked, or at least not failed abysmally, if they're in hyperspace. 

He smiles at her. “You did very well. And you certainly had the harder job. The Naboo handled themselves better than most units I’ve overseen.”

Barriss folds down a seat and sinks into it gratefully. “They are elite agents,” she points out. “It’s likely that they’ve been serving Amidala since her reign, which would give them, what, ten years? Fifteen? Considering the invasion and the wars, it’s of little surprise that they are capable.”

“I meant it as a compliment,” Mace says drily, “but I’m sure they appreciate your defence.”

The medbay door slides open with a _whoosh._ In the doorway, Ahsoka stares at them, eyes wide, lips parted, cheeks flushed. “You’re—” she says, and blinks. Clears her throat. “You’re alright.”

“We weren’t in the battlefield,” Mace says sardonically. “There’s a limit to how much more damage can be done to us, unless the ship gets blown up.”

Mutely, Ahsoka nods. Her eyes dart around the room, taking in the pain creased into Mace’s expression, the laxity of his form in the medicapsule, and fix on Barriss. Fixed by that gaze, Barriss can only stare back, heart beating unsteadily beneath her ribs.

Ahsoka flushes. “I need to talk to you.”

“Yes,” Barriss says unthinkingly, “yes, of course.” She stands, smoothing her skirt with her able hand, and follows Ahsoka down the hall toward the gunner’s tower. A small, dark-haired woman slips past them with a cordial smile, making for the cockpit. The war-worn part of Barriss that never sleeps, that constantly catalogues her surroundings, recognizes the woman as Moteé by her resonance in the Force. 

Ahsoka drops down into the gunner’s tower. After a moment’s hesitation, Barriss carefully follows. 

Hyperspace blurs past them blindingly; Ahsoka hits a control, and the transparisteel goes dark; the tower is lit only by the faint glow of the controls. In the dark, with only the hum of hyperspace and the rush of blood in her ears, Barriss waits for Ahsoka to speak. 

“I felt you,” Ahsoka says abruptly. “In the Force.” 

Barriss swallows. “Yes. Mace and I—”

“I know.” 

She can’t discern Ahsoka’s expression, turned away towards the dark window. 

“I trusted you,” Ahsoka says, something curt and desperate in her voice. “I—I looked up to you, I respected you, I cared about you, I thought you were my _friend.”_

“I was,” Barriss says, excruciatingly aware of the inadequacy of her words. “I am.”

“Are you?” Ahsoka stares at her, eyes hard. “I can’t tell sometimes.”

Never has she missed the ability in her injured arm more, wishing now to be able to fold her hands in her lap, to twist her fingers together. She doesn’t know what to do with the one hand, curled like a leaf against the black of her skirt. It’s pathetic. This whole situation — _her_ whole situation — is pathetic. There’s nothing she can say to this. What she has done is indefensible. 

“You—” Ahsoka stops. When she speaks again, she does so slowly, methodically, as if reciting a list of charges for the hundredth time. “I don’t care about the Temple bombing. Maybe one time, I could. But it’s more than that. You know it is.”

“I know,” Barriss says quietly.

“But you framed me,” Ahsoka says, with a frisson of heat. “You _betrayed_ me. Would you have ever — would you have let me be sentenced in your place? Be punished?”

“I don’t know.” It’s all she can say.

Ahsoka shakes her head. In the faint gleam of the gunner’s controls, her lekku sway, colours seeming to shift. “What I don’t understand,” she says lowly, “is — is you. We were friends, and then — then I was a casualty to your crusade, and then, today, in the Force—”

Ahsoka stops, and takes a breath. “I just don’t understand,” she murmurs, “how you can — how you can _sacrifice_ me, when you — if you feel that way about me—” She stops. “How you were in the Force, during the battle. That was real.”

“It was,” Barriss whispers. 

“I know,” Ahsoka says. “I know. I just don't understand how you could hurt me so badly when you care about me so much. And I don’t know how to trust you not to hurt me like that again. And I need to be able to trust you, because this is real to me even if it isn’t to you.”

Barriss swallows. “It is real to me. It’s always real.”

“That doesn’t make it better.” Ahsoka looks down, her hands knotted in her lap. “That just means I’ve hurt you without knowing it.”

“No,” Barriss says immediately, “you — you’re not responsible for that. I know my mind is unreliable. It shouldn’t affect you.”

“But it does,” Ahsoka says quietly. “I don’t know how we can trust each other. If we even should trust each other.”

Daringly, with a courage that does not belong to her, Barriss reaches to Ahsoka. “I trust you,” she says, soft. “I don’t trust myself. But I trust you.”

“That makes one of us,” Ahsoka mutters.

A bit helplessly, Barriss says, “There are no excuses for what I did to you. There is no defence. And I do not know the answers to your questions. I expected to be discovered immediately, and when I wasn’t, I was unprepared. I had no contingency, and everything was spiralling out of control and I didn’t know how to make it stop. I want to think that I would have cleared you. But I don’t know. I cannot trust myself.”

“So you’ve said,” Ahsoka says hoarsely. She swallows. “What does that mean, exactly?”

Her heart is a hurt, a gaping chasm of absence in her ribs. Her limbs are heavy. Her head aches. Barriss says, soft, “I feel things that aren’t real. I see things that aren’t real. I am not safe from myself.”

Ahsoka looks at her. Barriss whispers, “I can’t say more than that. Please. Don’t ask me to.”

“Alright,” Ahsoka says softly. “Alright. I need to think. Alone.”

There’s a cry in her throat, pressing against the roof of her mouth, the back of her teeth. Barriss swallows it down, and leaves. 

 

 

She wakes in the middle of the night to a shadow standing over her. 

“Ahsoka,” she says.

“I can’t sleep,” Ahsoka says. “Can I—?”

“Of course,” Barriss says, shifting to the far edge of her bed, putting a pillow on Ahsoka’s side.

But Ahsoka hasn’t moved, is still staring down at her. At last, she says, “I’m choosing to trust you.”

Her breath catches in her throat.

Ahsoka eases down next to her, pulling the blanket up to her shoulder. “Barriss,” she says.

“Yes,” Barriss whispers.

Ahsoka’s eyes shine like glass in the dark. “Don’t make me regret it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *flops down next to you* hey friends, how's it going, how's it hanging
> 
> THREE MORE CHAPTERS! can you believe this bc i can't


	8. eight: padmé

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first thing Sabé ever taught her was how to apply the Royal Naboo makeup: the tears, the scar, the red and gold and blue, the fine white powders and paints. The second thing Sabé had taught her, an unspoken lesson, was that while a blaster may be necessary, Padmé’s voice would always be her most powerful asset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …hello?
> 
> So, uh, y'know the romantic and/or sexy times promised eventually in the tags? They're here. Rating's gone up. You have been warned!
> 
> Is it appropriate to say "enjoy" to something like that? Regardless of your feelings to romantic and/or sexy times, I do hope you enjoy this extremely late chapter.

 

 

Kamino looms out of space, a dull slate-grey sphere before them. Padmé watches it warily.

She’s never been to Kamino. Obi-Wan has, of course, and it wouldn’t surprise her if Dormé’s visited as well on clandestine Naboo business, but Padmé has never made this particular pilgrimage. Part of it, she knows, is that she simply did not have time to spare, rushing around the galaxy on one diplomatic mission after another. But there’s another part, an ideal-born ugliness, that balked at the prospect of visiting Kamino, as though by witnessing the creation of an army she condoned its every action. _I will not condone a course of action that will lead us to war,_ she’d said, fourteen and so, so sure she knew what she was about, but time makes fools of all. Only distance reveals the pattern of the current.

In the Royal Palace in Theed, there was a reflection pool adjacent to her personal wing, long and serene, the water like a mirror under the cloudless sky. As Queen, Padmé had begun every day at sunrise with a long slow walk around the pool, meditatively reviewing the day’s agenda and contextualizing it in the week, the month, the year, her term. What had she accomplished? What had she promised her people? What had to be done, and how much time was left?

Each night, before she slept, she circled the pool again, this time with introspection as her purpose. Had she upheld the ideals of the Naboo? Had she achieved compromise, preserved peace? Had she done good without doing bad?

Things were easier as Queen, Padmé thinks. Things were clearer, then. There was right and there was wrong, and she was, a true compass, clear as glass, protecting and guiding her people. 

The Senate was a different story all together.

 

 

Padmé checks the twins’ wrappings, making sure they’re snug, safe, secure, as much as they can be when trespassing on a military base. Sabé watches her, indulging her paranoia, and Padmé feels foolish. Sabé had swaddled them, and if she cannot trust Sabé, who can she trust?

She does not want to bring Luke and Leia with her into the cloning facility. The thought of exposing them to danger abhors her. But Sabé will not let Padmé go alone, and Padmé will not leave her children to Threepio’s care. This is not because she distrusts Threepio (though she does distrust his ability to stay out of trouble); but if she cannot return, if she is killed or captured, there is no instruction she can give him now. The twins cannot go to Mon or Bail in the Core, where Palpatine will sense them; they cannot go to Naboo, where Palpatine will find them. She cannot inflict this danger upon Owen and Beru Lars, even if they are family, and she cannot bear the idea of sending her children, her babies, her blood and bone, to Yoda on Dagobah. So she will guard them herself, or die trying. 

Sabé settles Luke into Padmé’s back harness, and adjusts Padmé’s cloak until it covers him. Padmé kisses Leia as she buckles her daughter into Sabé’s harness. “Be brave, my heart,” she whispers.

Obi-Wan emerges from the cockpit, Artoo trundling purposefully at his side. “Ready?”

“Yes,” Sabé says easily, and Padmé echoes her with an assurance she does not entirely feel. 

“Ready,” she says. 

 

 

The ship is docked on the underbelly of a cloning pod on Kamino. It’s a steep and miserable climb up the maintenance shaft in rain that slices like sheets around them, buffeted by the wind. Padmé grasps the ladder after Obi-Wan, and immediately stops. This is absurd. She can’t go up in this onslaught, not when her enemy awaits on the other side ready to harm her, not with her children —

She’s panicking as she turns to Sabé, the words stuck in her throats as Sabé clasps her shoulders. “Stay,” Sabé says gently, already unbuckling her harness. “I will work with Obi-Wan and return to you soon. Keep by the comms.”

“Thank you,” Padmé breathes, cradling Leia to her breast. Sabé smiles at her, edged with teeth, and hurries up after Obi-Wan. Artoo, rockets bursting to life, goes last, and Padmé screws the hatch shut after them.

Threepio wanders in a moment later, only to stop and tilt at her abruptly. “Miss Padmé! I had thought you were going up with Master Kenobi and Miss Sabé.”

She finds her voice. “I’d planned to,” she says. “But—”

“Ah,” Threepio interrupts, kindness modulated through his speaker. “Say no more, my lady. I find that a nice hot oil bath is just the thing to soothe the nerves, particularly when things are most trying. Would you like me to draw one for you?”

She stares at him, a smile pushing through the edges of panic still masking her face. “No, but thank you, Threepio. I appreciate the offer. Now isn’t the best time, I think. I’m going to wait in the cockpit.”

“Very good, my lady,” Threepio says. “I shall tidy the ship. Do call if you need anything.”

With that, he bustles off toward the kitchen and laundry. Smiling, the twins nestled close to her, Padmé makes for the cockpit. An odd creature, Threepio; one minute the most irritating and melodramatic droid in the galaxy, the next an unexpected font of understanding and kindness. She hasn’t spent nearly enough time with him recently; she finds she misses him.

In the cockpit, she straps Leia and Luke into the seat just across from her, where she can keep an eye on them and keep the pilot’s seat open for Obi-Wan and Sabé’s eventual return. The comms are on; she listens intently for a moment, out of nerves more than any kind of professional protocol. When nothing happens, she looks out the cockpit.

There’s something unsettling about Kamino, beyond the cloning and beyond the military facilities. The raging sea, the violent rain, the impenetrable banks of clouds rushing overhead: Padmé is no stranger to seas nor storms, but this lies outside her experience entirely. Even Dac had islands, and its inhabitants lived at the sea floor; what kind of being claws its way up from the ocean’s darkest depths to forge a new and impossible life in the sky?

Useless speculation. She dismisses the train of thought. But the tempo, if not the volume, of the rain is familiar to her, and Padmé gazes out over the sea, lost in thought as the waters beat down above her.

 

 

Her handmaidens have taught her much over the years. They have served her from Queendom to Senate, as artists and activists and soldiers and spies, most steadfast advisor, most loyal confidante. And each of them has imparted necessary lessons. 

Dormé, quiet and capable, taught her to not look herself. To soften her proud carriage, to lower her brow and her eyes, to temper her voice demurely, to become a shadow. To raise a blaster instead of a pen, and fire unerringly. Necessary lessons, always, and especially now. 

The first thing Sabé ever taught her was how to apply the Royal Naboo makeup: the tears, the scar, the red and gold and blue, the fine white powders and paints. The second thing Sabé had taught her, an unspoken lesson, was that while a blaster may be necessary, Padmé’s voice would always be her most powerful asset.

Padmé turns, checks on the twins, checks that the comms are on loud and clear, and pulls out her personal datapad. It is time to speak.

 

 

The Senate was no better when she entered it as Senator than it had been when she entered as Queen. Still corrupt, still ineffectual, still light years removed from the concerns of its constituents. Watching the proceedings, Padmé wondered whether corruption and selfishness would decline if representatives served from their constituencies via hologram, instead of staying on Coruscant year round.

She had loved serving as Queen. The confidence, the moral certitude. She had been relieved when it had been over, ready to pass the heavy mantle to another brilliant girl, but ancestors, how she’d loved it. And how, as Queen, she’d despised the Senate, a rotten reeking quagmire of immorality and dissolution. But she had taken that mantle, too, however unwillingly, and sworn to serve the sector to the utmost of her abilities, and her people had believed her. They had believed in her. And, like every other senator, she had failed them.

 _What is it about politics that draws the worst of us?_ she thought. _And the best?_

And, terrifyingly: _Which one am I?_

 

 

Sabé makes contact as Padmé is starting her fourth draft. “Hello, my dear,” Sabé says, a little breathless; there’s a scream of blaster fire in the background. “D’you think you could come pick us up?” The comm transmits their location, and Padmé is on her way.

Sabé and Obi-Wan and Artoo are not alone, by the time they’ve left Kamino and jumped to hyperspace. They’ve brought two clones with them, and a tall, elegant Togruta woman — Shaak Ti.

“Padmé,” Obi-Wan says, once they’ve caught their collective breath. “You remember Rex and Cody?”

“Of course,” she says. It’s not a lie; she had not recognized them immediately, but she remembers them fondly. “Welcome. And to you, Master Ti.”

Ti smiles, her hand arcing gracefully through the air in what Padmé would normally read as a gesture of dismissal, but can’t. It charms, holds the attention, draws one closer. “We may dispense with the formalities,” Ti says, “under the circumstances.”

They sit and talk for hours in hyperspace — Rex and Shaak Ti explaining the implanted override chips in the clones, the cold complicity of the Kamino clones, and Sabé takes over near the end, explaining how they’d stumbled across one another in those eerie glowing halls. It’s heartbreaking, this revelation, but unspeakably exhilarating, too: the knowledge of having a favourable sabacc hand, of holding information that can change history. 

As Padmé and Sabé nurse the twins, Padmé turns it over in her mind, what to do with this new knowing. As far as she can see, there is little advantage to keeping it hidden from the Galaxy, and every advantage to be gained should it be released. The problem is releasing it at all, when Palpatine controls the Holonet and Padmé is in exile.

She turns to Sabé. “We need Dormé back.” If anyone can accomplish the impossible, it is Dormé.

Sabé’s eyes flick to where the Jedi face each other in silent communication, and then to Rex and Cody. “Perhaps not,” she says thoughtfully. “What have you been working on?”

It’s such a gift, to be loved by someone who knows her so well, who has been waiting for Padmé to raise her voice to the stars, who understands without words what she needs and why. Unable — unwilling — to stop herself, Padmé reaches for Sabé, cradling her jaw in her palm, sweeping the arc of her cheekbone with her thumb. Sabé exhales, soft, closing her eyes, and presses a kiss to Padmé’s palm. 

“It’s in the datapad,” Padmé says, “the most recent document.”

Shifting Leia in her arms, Sabé takes the datapad and opens the document. For several minutes, she reads in contemplative quiet, and Padmé closes her eyes, leaning against the bench’s back contentedly. 

“It’s good,” Sabé says. “But we need to make it shorter if you hope for it to reach as many beings as possible. This paragraph here — that could be condensed into a sentence, and swapped with the penultimate sentence in the previous paragraph. And I think you should not legitimize Palpatine’s coup by recognizing him as Emperor.”

“I could kiss you,” Padmé says, giddy and grateful and full of light.

Sabé arches a brow. “You should.”

She does.

 

 

Rex and Cody cook dinner; Padmé and Threepio clean, the latter too-easily distracted by Artoo whirring smugly in the corner, no doubt bragging about his heroics on Kamino. Obi-Wan bounces Leia on his knee, cushioning her with the Force, and Sabé plays peekaboo with Luke until he turns away, attention caught by some other curious happening.

Shaak leans toward him, long lekku swaying gracefully. “Am I the first non-human being they’ve seen? No,” she says, eyes intent on Luke’s, “they…ah, they saw Master Yoda. Yes, I can imagine, young one.” Her wide blue eyes crinkle in pleasure as Luke burbles a laugh.

“Are you,” Padmé says, turning away from the dishwasher, “communicating with him?”

“They are strong in the Force,” Shaak says, unflappably serene. “They project feelings and impressions, and I respond in kind. You communicate with them the same way — just without the visuals. Obi-Wan is training them?”

“Not yet,” Obi-Wan says quietly. “I am still trying to understand my flaws as a teacher, so that I do not fail them as I failed Anakin.”

Padmé’s heart stutters beneath her breast. 

“It is true, then,” Shaak says, sorrow a song in her voice. “Anakin Skywalker stands with the enemy as Darth Vader.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan whispers, and holds Leia close. For once, perhaps sensing his mood, Leia does not protest an end to play time, but reaches for his beard as though offering comfort. 

“I understand your fear, my friend,” Shaak says, unspeakably gentle. “But you must not allow it to rule you. Allow Anakin the dignity of having made his choices. Allow yourself the honour of having done the best by him that any of us could have done. You are a great teacher, Obi-Wan. You will do well by these younglings.”

“I hope you are right,” he says, and meets her gaze. “Thank you, Shaak.”

“Why don’t we start tonight?” she asks. “A simple meditation. It would be good for all of us.”

And so they do, the eight of them in a circle, Luke in Padmé’s lap and Leia in Sabé’s, directly across. In the rush of hyperspace, eyes closed, mind open to the universe, Padmé breathes, and loves, and loves.

 

 

The Senate was an unnavigable asteroid belt, as unreliable and twice as deadly, but Padmé held her head up high, smiled with practiced sincerity, and tried and tried and failed. And kept failing.

And then, again, always, inevitably: Anakin. That bright golden boy who burst back into her life with a burning lightsaber and a heart more scar than muscle, who looked at her and loved as if he had been born to do so, or so she had thought, curled around him in her home, her bed, the clear blue of his eyes and the light in his smile more enchanting than any sunrise. And she had loved him back, or so she had thought.

But there had been something else, too. It’s not that her love for Anakin is different from her love for Sabé, though it’s true and always will be; it’s that Padmé looked at him and opened herself, wife an ill-fitting and illegal title, lover an understatement, never quite able to articulate what she was to him and he to her except _necessary, essential, air in my lungs, marrow in my bones, the blood like water in my veins._ But she questions that, now. They were so poorly matched in so many ways, jagged halves cleaving together in a desperate, futile attempt to become whole. 

Was there ever any hope for them? Any true understanding outside that star-crossed love? Or was their entire relationship predicated upon Anakin’s all-consuming need to be saved, and Padmé, exhausted from failure, needing to prove she could save someone?

 

 

She does not regret Anakin. She cannot, not even knowing that he obliterated himself in her name. She mourns him; she misses him; she holds their children and loves them more than her own life, _knows_ them better than she knows herself, Leia’s rare and precious moments of tenderness, Luke’s wondering curiosity. She would not trade them for any Empire, any husband. 

But Padmé does not regret him. And now, sensing Sabé across from her, their daughter in her arms, her love steady and enduring as the tides, Padmé lets go of Anakin. He has made his choice; she has made hers. She will be happy, if she can. She will love, if she can.

 

 

That night, Obi-Wan offers to watch the twins. “A Jedi practice,” he says, “when the crèche is unavailable or inadvisable, to foster closeness between guardian and younglings. Shaak will meditate with me.”

“Of course,” Sabé says smoothly. Padmé hugs Obi-Wan, smiles at Shaak, and, masking the stab of anxiety at the thought of being away from her children for the first time in a month, kisses their fragile heads one by one, Leia then Luke. Ancestors, how she loves them. 

In their room, Sabé watches her, lovely and dark-eyed, lean and strong. “Do you want—?” she asks. 

Her heart thunders. It’s been a month, only a month, and yet — and yet. “I do,” Padmé says, steady as autumn rain. “Do you?”

Between one breath and the next, Sabé crosses the room, close enough Padmé can feel the heat from Sabé’s body, can feel the electric thrum of desire in her veins, her breast, her mouth, her clit, in the air between them. 

“Always,” Sabé says, and kisses her.

The kiss earlier, over Padmé’s children and datapad, had been sweet, chaste, a tender press of mouth to mouth, a slow warm acknowledgement, _i am here i am here, i am not leaving, i choose to stay, i choose you with eyes as open as my heart._ And this kiss, now, between them in the dark of their shared bedroom, shares that acknowledgement and that tenderness, but it’s firmer, too, a wanting hunger with a prick of teeth and slide of tongue. 

Sabé curls one hand around Padmé’s hip, grounding her, the pressure firm enough to bruise if she wants.

She wants the bruise. She wants to be marked, to wear this choice, Sabé’s love, on her skin for days, to be reminded of tonight in every shift of muscles under that sweet ache. She gasps into Sabé’s mouth, breathless, hot with it, with wanting, squirming closer to heat, contact, satisfaction. 

Sabé reaches for her clothes, eyes dark and steady on Padmé’s own, and unbuttons her capelet, letting it fall to the ground in a slither of silk. She unfastens Padmé’s collar and bodice, pushes the sleeves over her hands with gentle determination. She rests her hand on the close of Padmé’s pants.

Padmé trembles. She breathes, hard, shaky. “Please.”

Sabé, hands steady as a surgeon’s, a sniper’s, unties the drawstring of Padmé’s pants. They fall to the floor, a puddle of fabric heavy around her ankles. Gaze unwavering, Sabé skates her fingertips along Padmé’s side, buttock to hip to breast to neck, splaying her lovely long-fingered hand over the flutter of Padmé’s pulse, the work of her throat, her thumb just resting on the swell of Padmé’s lip.

She can’t breathe. Can’t move. Sabé’s gaze fixes her to the spot, steady, penetrating, unflinching. Her breasts, sore of milk and mouths on them, ache to be held, nipples ripening into nubs, skin shivering into goose flesh. 

Sabé’s thumb is still on her lip. Padmé whispers, “I’m not going anywhere.” She ducks forward, takes the thumb in her mouth, sucking it forward, loving it with her tongue.

Sabé stares at her, rocking her hand just so, in time with Padmé’s mouth, making her chase after it. Finally, steadily, she begins to undress, discarding her practical, comfortable clothes onto the floor of their room, until she stands naked and glorious, taller than Padmé and leaner, her small breasts heavy with their own milk, hair curling dark over her cunt.

“My dear,” Sabé says quietly, her eyes still dark and intent as though the secrets of the universe will be revealed if only she does not blink. She steps close to Padmé, close enough that their breasts shiver against one another, and kisses her, deep, slow, thorough. There’s an edge of possessiveness to Sabé’s mien, a fierce claiming, _i was here first, i know her best, i have been hers since first we met, i never hurt her and i never will,_ and Padmé kisses her all the more hungrily for it, aching for that care, that devoted love.

“Bed,” Sabé murmurs, a vibration of sound at her lips, “—Padmé.”

“Yes,” she breathes, backing until her thighs hit the cool frame and she sits, her hands roving over Sabé’s shoulders, ribs, the dip of her waist and the curve of her ass, brushing light as fire across her breast. Sabé’s breath catches; Padmé cups the breasts in her hands and kisses between them, around them, careful not to milk them.

At her touch, Sabé groans. Her head drops forward, a graceless fall to rest on Padmé’s hair, her brow. “Padmé—” she breathes, and Padmé kisses the curve of her smile into Sabé’s breast. She skims her hand back down that lean muscled side, cups one smooth buttock, and traces her fingers through that silky dark thatch of hair, reaching until she finds what she’s looking for: that sweet slick centre of Sabé’s sex, so she can slide her fingers through labia to clit and back, tracing Sabé’s entrance coyly.

“Ancestors — _Padmé—!”_ Sabé hisses, hips bucking forward involuntarily, straining towards friction, and Padme pulls her down and kisses her thoroughly, hungrily, pulls her in more until Sabé straddles her legs, curled over her like a firework; pulls her closer until Sabé’s back hits the mattress with a soft _thump,_ and Padmé can crawl over her, kissing her beautiful mouth, her long throat, that ridge of cartilage and bone where the skin is so thin between her breasts. And Sabé, Sabé pants up at her, one hand thrown over in search of something to grasp, one tangling into Padmé’s hair. Ancestors, Padmé can’t believe she gave this up, the flutter of Sabé’s pulse, the rise of her lungs, the warm wet that slicks Padmé’s stomach and thighs where Sabé strains up to her, to friction, to rubbing off and that won’t do; Padmé intends to take her time.

So: suck a bruise into Sabé’s sternum, kiss down and down, loving the way Sabé’s stomach jumps under her lips, how her thighs spread to make space. Kiss those dark sweat-sweet curls, and tilt her hips up to greet that most intimate place. Inhale: sweat, musk, the waters of Lake Varykino. Padmé groans, pressing her own hips down in search of relief, nosing into that warm tender place. Kiss, lick, tongue swiping with eager, firm pressure from Sabé’s slick entrance to her clit, and Sabé thrashes under her mouth, breath caught in her throat. 

She does this, over and over again, tucking her tongue into Sabé’s cunt, exploratory, mouthing her labia, sucking her clit, and Sabé doesn’t cry out, but Sabé wouldn’t make a sound if she were being tortured, and every stuttered breath, every low moan and whimper is a kriffing gift, and Padmé loves it, treasures it, pulls it from her again and again and again, heedless of her aching jaw and the crick in her neck and her own increasingly desperate desire, until she lowers her mouth to Sabé’s entrance, shoves her tongue inside and sucks, and presses her thumb against Sabé’s clit.

Sabé _wails,_ biting down on her forearm to keep quiet, her other hand fisted tight in Padmé’s hair, and Padmé holds her through it, strokes her side and loves her cunt, until Sabé pushes her away with trembling hands, breathing hard and fast.

“Kriff,” Sabé says at last, breath evening out, “get _up here,_ Padmé—”

Padmé grins, and goes.

 

 

Rex is already in the kitchen, brewing caff at the counter, when Padmé ambles in the next morning, pleasantly sore, covering a yawn with her hand. 

He looks up, expression carefully neutral, and says, “Good night?”

She freezes, cheeks flaming. Rex grins at her. “I’m glad for you,” he says, kindness thrumming through his words. “Caff?”

“No,” she says, voice gratifyingly steady, “but thank you.” She and Sabé drink tea, both from the Naboo tradition and to avoid too much caffeine while they nurse. While Rex assembles breakfast, nutrient bars and the last of their fruit, Padmé boils water, spoons tea leaves sparingly into an infuser. 

Obi-Wan and Shaak emerge mere minutes later, the twins still asleep. “Meditation,” Obi-Wan tells Padmé when she asks. “They’re unused to that cultivated openness to the Force. It’ll tire them out for a while yet.”

Shaak takes the first cup of caff Rex offers, and hands the second to Obi-Wan. Sabé slinks out as the water boils, perfectly composed save for the suggestion of a smirk at the corner of her mouth, and settled in next to Padmé, pressing a kiss and a murmured _good morning_ to her cheek.

Shaak smiles serenely into her caff. Rex winks. Obi-Wan, his cheeks nearly as red as Padmé’s own, busies himself with bringing plates to the table. Cody stumps into the kitchen a minute later, moving unerringly towards the caff, and doesn’t acknowledge any of them until he’s finished his first cup. 

Padmé breaks the companionable quiet first. “I need your help with something.”

Obi-Wan quirks a brow at her in question.

“I want to make a statement,” she says. Obi-Wan stills.

“That, I believe,” says Shaak with some satisfaction, “is a very good idea.”

“I agree,” Sabé says. “It’s already written; I’ve looked it over and it’s short enough to be transmitted at least into the inner Mid-Rim. Enough there will re-transmit it into the Core that it’s seen by those who need to see it. And the relay will further obscure the point of origin.”

“Cody and I can set up the transmission,” Rex says, nodding to his brother, “once he’s back with the living, that is.”

Cody grunts from behind his mug of caff.

“Padmé,” Obi-Wan says quietly, “may I speak to you for a moment?”

She follows him from the room.

He looks at her, those fine clear eyes worn at the edges — exhaustion, grief, worry making an old man of him before his time. 

“I know why you will do this,” he says: the political necessity of announcing a form of resistance, her cachet and authority, the terror of the coming age. “And I pledged to you my friendship and my loyalty and I will not rescind either; I will help you in this and protect you to the best of my ability. But I ask, Padmé, that you bring me into the discussions of any statements to be released in the future.”

“Obi-Wan,” she says softly.

“Let me finish,” he whispers. “You promised equality when we started this, Padmé. And you do not have just yourself to keep safe: any step you take into the public eye will endanger your children, and you must be prepared for that. And—” His voice cracks. “I could not bear to lose another friend, Padmé.”

She goes to him quickly; he’s fallen to his knees before her, and she cradles his head to her belly. His shoulders tremble beneath her hands.

“There is nothing certain in the universe except gravity,” Padmé whispers. “I cannot predict what the future holds; I have no affinity for the Force. But I give you my word, Obi-Wan, that I will not endanger myself recklessly. There is too much to live for, to fight for, to give up now. And I would not do it without you, my friend. I am sorry to have distressed you. You are right; I will do better in keeping my promises. Any mission developments will be discussed at least among the three of us.”

Obi-Wan exhales, a little shaky, hands at her hips, nose just above her womb. How far they’ve come from Mustafar, in this openness, this tactility. She smoothes his hair back, and waits for him to settle.

At last, he stands, wipes his eyes. She catches his cheek in her palm, the grain of his beard pleasantly prickly against her skin. “Let’s return to the others,” she says, once she has his attention. “We’ve work to do.”

 

 

It takes the better part of a Galactic Standard Day to set up the transmission, to anonymize it through hundreds of proxies all over the Holonet relays in the Mid Rim. But Cody and Rex, and Obi-Wan and Sabé, too, manage it, boosting the range of their own recording apparatus while Shaak plots a course and Padmé whispers the words of the broadcast to her children, over and over, trying out different emphases and stresses, pacing and rhythms. 

Be calm, but not placid. Angry, but not hysterical. Treasonous, but not alienating. Direct, but not patronizing. Fine fragile lines blurred from one continent to another, one planet to another, one system to another. An impossible task, but the only chance she has. The only chance any of them have.

At last, Sabé ducks into her room. “We’re nearly ready,” she says. “Let’s get you Holonet-ready.” She pulls and twists Padmé’s hair into an elegant knot and the nape of her neck; powders her face, darkens her brows and edges her eyes in a fine line of kohl to draw attention to her gaze in the broadcast. On each cheek, she paints a blue teardrop in Naboo woad; on her lower lip, she draws the scar of remembrance in gold. The colours won't matter, really; it’s unlikely they’ll even be distinguishable on the broadcast, but it’s the ritual that matters, the way the cosmetics centre Padmé in her own skin. 

“Perfect,” Sabé murmurs, a sly smile peeking out of the corner of her mouth, “if I do say so myself.” Padmé laughs, and Sabé grins, and accepts Luke into her arms. Obi-Wan takes Leia in the room they’ve converted for the transmission recording.

“Your mama’s about to make history,” Sabé whispers to the twins, and Padmé straightens as Cody counts down and the recording begins.

 

 

 _My fellow beings,_ she says. _My friends, my allies, my adversaries. I speak to you from exile undertaken not for lack of faith in this Galaxy we share, but for threat to my life._

 _I have served in the Republic since my childhood: as Princess of Theed, as Queen of Naboo, and most recently as Senator for the Chommel Sector. Throughout my years of service, I have fought for peace without rest. I have fought for aid and security and equality between species, genders, planets, and sectors. And because of my unflagging efforts in these causes, I know firsthand how the Republic failed so many for so long. How it denied food to the hungry, medicine to the sick, rest to the weary, hope to the downtrodden._

_But I also know that Chancellor Palpatine’s decision to make an empire of the democratic institutions we have so long defended is not the answer._

_That the system was corrupt, I will not dispute. That this new empire will be any better, I reject wholly. And so, my fellow beings, my fellow citizens: whatever belief you may have towards galactic governance, I implore you to have hope. To keep faith. To trust not in the institutions that have failed you but in each other, in enduring alliances, in the ideals you cherish._

_Change will not come immediately. But it will not come at all if we do not defend and promote the principles that have guided us for millennia._

_A new hope is dawning. Let us return to the light._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Padmé's speech was actually one of the first things I wrote in this chapter. There was originally going to be a lot less introspection and a lot more interplanetary espionage/rescues/etc., but then Trump won the election and...that just really didn't seem feasible at the moment. 
> 
> If you're here at all, reading this extremely gay take on Star Wars with All The Ladies, I'm guessing we're on the same political wavelength anyway. We're in for some terrifying times, folks, especially if tomorrow's Electoral College vote doesn't change anything. And I'm not about to advocate compassion for those who voted for Trump or have spent the time since the election blaming identity politics for the fall of the Democratic Party. The first group made their bed, either voting for Trump because of his racism, misogyny, callous cruelty, ableism, homophobia and transphobia, and dogged uninformedness, or in spite of all those things, and I honestly can't tell which one is scarier. The second group is missing the point altogether.
> 
> My approach to politics has never been "extend compassion and respect to those who consider me undeserving of human rights," and it's certainly not about to be that now. So, what I'm trying to say, I guess, is be mindful of the people most threatened by Trump and the resurgence of white supremacy. Be kind to each other, protect each other. Look out for our queer and trans siblings, our Jewish and Muslim communities, the immigrants who build this country, the Black Lives Matter movement, the dis-/differently abled and neuroatypical among us, and every intersection of these and more identities. 
> 
> Be mindful of your privileges and your experiences, be careful to listen and to speak when it's appropriate, and above all, let's look out for one another. No one else is going to.


	9. nine: ahsoka

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ah,” Dormé says quietly. “You refer to Lord Vader.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....hello again

Ahsoka wakes. It’s dark; this does not surprise her. They’re in space, which is naturally blacker than pitch and studded with blinding light too far to see by. She’s warm. This does not surprise her, either. She is, after all, a battle-tempered Jedi, and she survived on her own on Coruscant for longer than she likes to remember. Situational awareness — remembering where and with whom you fall asleep — is key to survival.

She looks at Barriss. They’d fallen asleep facing each other, neither willing to shift and so cede the right to stare hungrily at the other. But Ahsoka, exhausted from the Temple and the escape and the unfriendly, circuitous thoughts wrestling in her mind, had drifted off first, soothed in some bizarre way by the warm weight of Barriss on the mattress, the heaviness of those cobalt eyes. 

Now, Barriss sleeps — though, Ahsoka thinks, not deeply. There’s a furrow in her pale green brow, a wrench in her mouth echoing the tension in her shoulders. Lightly, Ahsoka extends a tendril of Force-thought, enough to determine if Barriss suffers from nightmares or delusions or just discomfort, if Ahsoka would help or hurt in waking her. She catches a heavy, drowning current of fear, a glimpse of the Detention Centre, of Luminara’s placid, stoic expression, of eyes glinting gold in the dark, and then Barriss snaps back to awareness.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Ahsoka whispers. Her voice sounds rough to her own ears; she can’t bring herself to say _sorry,_ not even for something so small as this.

Barriss looks at her for a long moment, unblinking in the dark. “I know,” she says, equally soft. There’s a look in her eyes, though, unspoken between them: _thank you._

Uneasy, Ahsoka looks away, down the bed to where her feet pressed close to Barriss’ during the night. Close like this, Barriss radiates heat, and it’s all Ahsoka can do not to press closer, take comfort in that contact. 

_I’m choosing to trust you,_ she’d said to Barriss last night, heartsore and weary, and she’d meant it, had known that extending that trust was inevitable. One way or another, they’d always been bound together; the genocide of the Jedi just accelerated a reconciliation that might have been years in the making. 

But she still doesn’t know where they stand with each other.

Barriss is watching her, as if every one of Ahsoka’s thoughts is writ plain on her face, and maybe it is. She’s tired, despite the first really deep sleep she’s had in weeks, and not guarding well. She’s probably bleeding her emotions all over the Force. 

Barriss says, quietly, “I’m going to make some tea in the mess. Would you like some?”

Not trusting her voice, Ahsoka nods. Barriss slips away like a shadow. 

Alone in the room, Ahsoka curls into the warm cocoon of blankets where Barriss had slept, hand splayed along the soft catch of the sheets as if seeking secondhand touch. But there’s no reciprocation, no pressing back. She throws off the blankets and gets up.

She hadn’t changed last night, too tense about Barriss and the escape from Coruscant to think about something as disarming as exchanging her uniform for sleep clothes, but she regrets that decision now. There’s a closet tucked into one wall; Ahsoka lifts a tunic and pants, a bandeau and underwear and thick woollen socks, and makes for the fresher. The tunic has finely carved wooden buttons up the front, so she’ll be able to fit it around her montrals and lekku. 

Barriss hasn’t returned by the time Ahsoka’s done in the fresher; whether that’s due to her wanting to give Ahsoka privacy or a commotion out of the room is unknown. Ahsoka extends another Force-thought slipping down the ship’s halls, locating Barriss in the mess (calm, but carefully so), Moteé and Rabé piloting in the cockpit (focused but self-assured), and Mace and Dormé in the infirmary — each grim and tense and wary of the other.

Better make sure no one gets hurt, then.

She follows the lingering traces of her Force-thought back out of the cabins up to the infirmary, padding silently down the hall.

“—exactly what the Senator intends to do,” Mace says waspishly, “now that’s she’s isolated us. Tano, I understand, but me? Offee? You’ll excuse me for distrusting politicians — what did you say your name was?”

“‘Dormé,’” Dormé says evenly.

There’s a beat of silence. “No family name?” Mace grits out.

“No,” Dormé says, and returns to the topic at hand. “Surely you do not believe Senator Amidala is devoid of compassion, Master Jedi? She has collaborated more closely with your Order than any of her peers. I would have thought that engendered a little goodwill.”

There’s a flare of temper, violet edged in red, in the Force; Ahsoka hurries, about to barge in and attempt to defuse the situation when suddenly that heightened Force-awareness that had guided her in the Temple’s aftermath returns. _**STOP,**_ it tells her, and, stunned, she freezes, unable to move even if she wanted to.

 _listen,_ it whispers. Ahsoka breathes, and leans close to the door.

“Believe me,” Mace says, cold as midnight ice on Ilum, “I am well aware of just how close Senator Amidala was to the Jedi.”

He can’t mean — can he? It makes no sense — surely Padmé’s relationship with Anakin makes her an ally in this fight, sets her immutably opposed to the political machinations that took his life? Why would Mace distrust her so steadfastly?

“Ah,” Dormé says quietly. “You refer to Lord Vader.”

_Who?_

A grunt. “So that’s what he’s calling himself these days.”

There’s a brush of movement behind the door. “I swear to you,” Dormé says, serious as a grave, “on my ancestors, on the life of my Queen, on the sanctity of our sisterhood: he is our enemy.”

“That so,” Mace says, skeptical, but the flair of temper, of tension, has eased.

“Padmé herself delivered the news to Queen Apailana,” Dormé says. “She is coordinating a resistance with Senator Organa and Master Yoda. Master Kenobi is with her. They went to Mustafar to kill him, and sent me to Coruscant to extract Ahsoka. We are on your side. You are not alone.”

“He’s not dead,” Mace says after a moment. “Is he.”

“No,” Dormé concedes. “Skywalker lives—”

The rest of Dormé’s words fade into the distance, drowned out by the blood rushing through Ahsoka’s ears and montrals. Anakin is alive. _Anakin is alive._ But where? And why hasn’t Padmé sent a team to rescue him? Or — it’s _Padmé,_ of course she sent a team to rescue Anakin, even though he’s sure to have broken out of wherever he’s being held by now. 

A bright pulse of fondness bursts through her chest. _Anakin is alive._ And the blistering pain she’d felt, the empty chasm where their training bond used to hang between them, that must have been the bond breaking, not his death! He’d broken the bond to protect her, surely, to make sure he couldn’t lead anyone — this Lord Vader, and how many kriffing Sith Lords _are_ there? — to her, and to make sure she wouldn’t do anything stupid like try to help him and, Force save her, it had _worked_. Kriff, she’s out of practice dealing with Anakin. 

He’s such an _idiot,_ her master, that it’s a wonder he survived this long. She’s got to find him. But he’s _alive,_ is the important thing, and if he’s alive, Ahsoka can save him.

There’s something unspeakably giddy bubbling in her chest, relief and desperation and hysteria shivering out along her ribs, the notches of her spine. And maybe that’s what makes her reach recklessly for the release on the door, and maybe it’s that scintillating Force-sense that comes and goes with a will of its own, but as soon as the door hisses open and Dormé and Mace whip around to stare at her, Ahsoka knows that something is terribly, terribly wrong.

“Ahsoka,” Dormé says, recovering more quickly than Mace. “I thought you were still asleep. Have you eaten?”

It’s such a non sequitur, a bizarre change in subject, that Ahsoka is thrown for a moment. “No,” she says, and “Barriss is making tea,” and drags her focus back where it belongs —

“If you could bring a cup to Moteé and Rabé in the cockpit, I’m sure they’d appreciate it,” Dormé says.

Ahsoka opens her mouth to speak, and closes it again. Dormé — and Mace, too, if his silence is anything to go by — does not want her to have heard anything. Dormé would, in fact, very much like to mother her into complacency, to kill any questions with kindness, and it’s a sign of just how alone Ahsoka has been, and how afraid she is of getting the answers (because surely, if it were good news, Dormé would _tell her)_ , that she’s tempted to back down.

But it’s Anakin. He never abandoned her. She will not abandon him.

“Anakin’s alive?” Ahsoka says softly, a question that isn’t a question, that knows the answer.

Something twists oddly in Dormé’s expression, grief or anger or pity or all three at once. 

“You should sit down, Ahsoka,” Dormé says quietly.

 _sit_ , the Force whispers. _listen._

It hasn’t steered her wrong yet. Ahsoka perches carefully on the edge of an empty cot, and waits.

Dormé looks at Mace for a long moment; he looks back at her inscrutably and nods. She swallows.

“Ahsoka,” Dormé says, quiet and steady. She kneels in front of Ahsoka, takes her hands. “Anakin Skywalker has betrayed the Republic.”

“I don’t understand,” Ahsoka says. The sentence makes only grammatical sense. ‘Anakin Skywalker has left the Order and become a nerf herder’ would be more plausible.

There’s a sheen in Dormé’s eyes, a dampness like tears; her hands are steady around Ahsoka’s. She says, “Anakin Skywalker renounced the Jedi and the Republic. He swore fealty to Palpatine and the new Empire. He led the attack on the Temple. He is called Lord Vader.”

This — this can’t be right —

Trembling, Ahsoka pulls her hands from Dormé’s grasp. “Who are you?” she whispers.

Dormé blinks. “I serve Padmé Amidala.”

“Padmé would _never_ — Anakin loves her, he would never betray her like this—”

“And yet, he did,” Mace says quietly. “I was there, Ahsoka. Skywalker approached me with intelligence that Palpatine was the Sith Lord we had been seeking. I took Kit Fisto, Agen Kolar, and Saesee Tiin to the Senate to confront him; I did not trust Skywalker to go against a man he had so long defended. And it was a slaughter. Palpatine killed the Masters in seconds. I’ve never before encountered such sabre tactics. And I had him cornered at last, ready to destroy him, when Skywalker arrived.”

“No,” Ahsoka whispers, “—but you’re alive, how—?”

“Skywalker wanted to arrest Palpatine. Said he needed him for some reason — something, I think, to do with the Senator. But Palpatine was too dangerous, and I said so, and Skywalker attacked. He cut off my hand,” Mace says, raising his prosthetic, “and I lost my lightsaber with it, and then Palpatine electrocuted me and I fell from the chamber. And then you found me.”

The Force curls around her, tender like a sister, radiating _grief love truth truth truth, this is the truth, believe this, ahsoka —_

Anguish burns a bright path up her sternum, her throat, stealing her breath as capably as Hondo Ohnaka stole Jedi and weapons and bargaining chips. Burning — like Anakin had burned, that night when the Jedi died — when he killed them — when the people he loved best tried to kill him — when everyone lost and nobody won, and the Galaxy screamed its agony through the Force.

Everyone lost, and nobody won, except Palpatine.

Ahsoka pries her hands away from her face. At some point in the preceding minutes, she’d raised them to cover her eyes, to shield her from Dormé’s and Mace’s evaluative silences.

“Okay,” she says. It’s not okay; it will never be okay, but her voice does not betray her. 

“Ahsoka,” says Dormé, with so much compassion that Ahsoka could choke on it, so she shakes her head, lekku swaying with the motion, and stands.

“I’m going to see about that tea,” she says. Dormé stands, too, mouth pressed neatly closed as though to seal any words inside.

Barriss isn’t in the mess, and Ahsoka doesn’t trust her control of the Force very much at the moment, and so doesn’t look for her; but the water is still hot. Like a ship on autopilot, she measures and steeps and strains tea, like Anakin had taught her one sleepless war-scarred night, and brings two cups to the cockpit, passing them to Rabé and Moteé silently.

Then, she goes to the gunner’s tower.

The shades are still down from her talk with Barriss last night; only the hum of the ship and the faint vibration of this more vulnerable part of it hint at the blue-white madness of hyperspace screaming past the transparisteel. As she had last night, Ahsoka curls up in the gunner’s seat, bound to the velocity of the universe, staring up into the dark.

 

 

There’s a knock at the doorway a few hours later: Rabé, in blue silks and holding a blanket, a cup of tea. Ahsoka stirs in her seat, stiff, sore, and looks at her.

“I thought I’d return the favour,” Rabé says gently.

Ahsoka is cold. She takes the blanket, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders, and then curls her hands around the cup of tea.

Rabé leans against a console, resting her weight enough that she and Ahsoka are of a height, that Rabé doesn’t loom, that Ahsoka doesn’t have to strain to see her.

“Dormé told me about your master,” Rabé says, soft enough that Ahsoka doesn’t have to hear it if she does not want to.

She rolls this choice around her mouth like a sweet, like a swallow of tea, holding it for a moment in indecisive tension. At last, she murmurs, “I don’t know how to — how to _know_ this.”

Rabé hums. “It’s difficult,” she says after a moment, “when you are so accustomed to acting on knowledge, on facts and intelligence, to not know what to do with the knowledge.”

“It’s more than that.” Ahsoka looks away. The thought flies to her: _I am tired of not knowing how to reconcile these truths._ Barriss, first, and now this.

“He’s — Anakin. He’s not evil,” she says. “He didn’t have some kind of long plot that he hid from us all these years, my knowing him wasn’t a lie.” She thinks of Barriss, the aftermath of the Temple bombing, the betrayal like a open wound in her gut. “I trust” — she laughs, tight, fractured — “I trusted him more than anyone in the Galaxy.”

“I know,” Rabé says softly.

Ahsoka looks up at her sharply. “He was my _Master_ ,” she says, hard. “You don’t know.”

“Perhaps not,” Rabé concedes. “You had your master. I have my Queen. It is a different circumstance entirely. But I hurt for you all the same.”

Ahsoka looks away again. “How,” she whispers, “can he have done this?”

Rabé says nothing for a long, aching moment. 

“You knew Anakin Skywalker better than I, I am sure,” she says at last. “I met him when we were both children, on Tatooine. I remember — he was such a small boy, kind and sweet and eager to please. Already half-in-love with Padmé, though he didn’t know it yet. He came to her rooms on Coruscant just before he was to go to the Jedi Temple for the first time. ‘I don’t know if I’ll see her again,’ he said to me. He just wanted to say goodbye. And I had to tell him no, even though I felt like the cruelest being in the Galaxy, because I had to protect my Queen, and the decoys were still a secret.”

Rabé reaches her hand to Ahsoka’s, an offer of absolution. “I know that there is no shame in what I did. But I still feel guilt for it. We all are capable of cruelty, in small or significant ways, if we believe we have no other choice.” 

Gently, Rabé takes the empty tea cup, and leaves.

 

 

Barriss comes by at night. It’s late, or so the chrono says; time is relative in hyperspace. 

“Let me guess,” Ahsoka says. Her voice is rough with disuse. “Dormé told you.”

But Barriss shakes her head. “Mace.”

“I’m surprised.” It feels like the right thing to say.

“So was I.” Barriss looks at her. “Are you hungry?”

Ahsoka shakes her head.

“Then get some sleep,” Barriss says. “Come on.”

In bed, she lies on her back, while Barriss faces her, eyes intent, unblinking, close enough that their arms brush when they shift.

“Rabé said it was about choice,” Ahsoka says at last. “Or the absence of it.”

Barriss hums. “That makes sense.”

Ahsoka shifts, tilting her body to meet Barriss’ gaze. “Was it like that for you?”

The quiet stretches between them under Barriss’ evaluative stare, like spider-silk or a weapon’s blast frozen in place. “In a way,” she says at last. “I would not have framed it as such. But we are all only the choices that we make.”

Ahsoka holds this answer close, pulling it apart, teasing out the meaning. The sum of her choices — what does that make her? Traitor, coward? Faithless?

She sets that aside for later. Nudges Barriss, the skin thin over her elbow, almost bone to bone and solid, knobby. Electric. Her stomach flutters; she fights to keep her voice even. “What was it about for you?”

Barriss looks at her, looks away. “The future.”

Ahsoka pushes. “What about the future?”

Barriss shrugs, and rolls onto her back, her frail, wounded arm curled over her breast. Shoulder to shoulder, almost hip to hip. “I saw a future in which the Jedi would fall. And I saw it had already begun. I did what I thought would best arrest that future.”

“Survival,” Ahsoka realizes. 

“Again.” Barriss shrugs. “Not how I would frame it, but — if it makes more sense to you. Most things are, at their most basic level, about trying to survive. We fight for the future in which we have the greatest chance of living.”

“Surviving, you mean.”

“That, too.”

 

 

The next day, Ahsoka does not hide in the gunner’s tower. She goes with Barriss to the mess, brings tea to the cockpit where Moteé is just taking over from Dormé, Rabé still asleep, and then carries a tray to the medbay, her grief a stone beneath her ribs.

Dormé is there already, consulting with Barriss and Mace on his latest scans. He’s healing — not well, not quickly, not as he should but as best he can under the circumstances. Hyperspace isn’t helping; most beings weren’t designed to travel at these speeds. 

“Well,” Dormé says, “if all goes as planned, we’ll drop in forty-eight hours. There’ll be plenty of time to rest and heal then.”

Ahsoka drags her eyes from her tea, asking — _c’mon, Snips, don’t go in blind if you can help it — you should take your own advice, sometime, Skyguy_ — “Where are we going?” 

Dormé looks at her, long and assessing. “Thape,” she says at last. 

At Mace’s side, Barriss looks up, sharp eyes glittering; she exchanges a long, meaningful look with Mace.

Ahsoka looks between them searchingly. “What am I missing?” 

Dormé answers, words measured and careful. “Thape is…a secret of Naboo’s planetary security. I am telling you this only because Senator Amidala has put her faith in you, and because you may have need of it someday. We believe —though without any hard evidence — that the first of the Naboo came from Thape. In the millennia since our settlement in the Chommel sector, Thape has been guarded as a refuge, rendezvous, a last resort. As a handmaiden and—” Dormé stops abruptly. “I have access to Thape. We will meet the Senator and her crew there.”

Her heart aches, that stone of grief bruising as she breathes, but if only — if Padmé is there, Ahsoka can endure. “Padmé will be waiting for us?” 

“It is unlikely, though not impossible,” Dormé says. “She was preparing a mission with Master Kenobi when I left. We will send word to her from Thape and await her arrival. Now, if there is nothing else — I would very much like to get some sleep.”

And Obi-Wan, too — she will endure this. She can, she will, she must. Of all the people in the Galaxy, they will understand. But there are more pressing matters.

As soon as Dormé’s gone, Ahsoka turns to Mace and Barriss. “What was that about?”

“Treason?” Mace suggests, and Ahsoka fights the urge to make a rude gesture. Of course Dormé should not have told them, but desperate times and all — and the day she misses subtext that obvious is the day she dies, most likely.

“No — the significant glances you two were exchanging. The whole ‘oh, we know something they don’t know’ thing.”

“Nothing,” Mace says curtly.

Barriss rolls her eyes. “Your distrust of us does you no favours,” she tells him. “If you do not tell her, I will.”

From the medicapsule, Mace glowers, but says nothing.

“It’s the Order of Dai Bendu,” Barriss says, turning to Ahsoka. “An ancient predecessor to the Jedi. They were based on Thape, before they died out.”

“That’s pure conjecture,” Mace says irritably. “There are no remaining Bendu, no trace of their writings, if indeed they ever existed. They’re a myth. Nothing more.”

Ahsoka crosses her arms. “You seem awfully defensive for something that’s just a myth, Mace.”

“Perhaps I don’t want you two to waste your time and energy on mythical conspiracy theories when we have a very _real_ conspiracy to contend with,” he says coldly. “The Galaxy is dark enough without inventing another threat.”

 

 

At night, by unspoken agreement, Ahsoka goes back to Barriss’ room, arms full of blankets and pillows from the bunk she’d been offered. It’s unnerving, a little, to be so close, so vulnerable to Barriss; to see Barriss without her veil, her long skirts and full sleeves exchanged for soft sleep-pants and a sleeveless vest, a large sweater in a shapeless mound at her side. There’s a tin of some kind of salve balanced on her knee, and she’s rubbing it into her arm, and Ahsoka stops, transfixed by the sight, staring.

Barriss’ arm looks awful. Wizened, withered, almost desiccated, grey in hue with a gruesome black tinge to the veins running through it. Any muscle looks to have atrophied; all there is is skin, and bone, and blood.

She comes back to herself; Barriss is watching her, even, expressionless. Ahsoka swallows. “Is it any better?”

Barriss looks away. “No.”

Uncomfortably, Ahsoka asks, “Is there anything I can do?”

Barriss looks back to her. “Thank you.” Her voice is so gentle. “But I don’t think there is.”

Ahsoka nods, and crawls under the covers. A few minutes later, the mattress dips with Barriss’ weight, heat radiating into the space between them.

Ahsoka nudges her, careful not to jostle Barriss’ arm. “What did you make of that? The Thape, Order of Dai Bendu thing?”

The corner of Barriss’ mouth twitches in a smile. “Any number of things,” she says. “Which is likely at least one reason Mace didn’t want to discuss the Order of Dai Bendu.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Barriss says, “I cannot be relied upon to behave rationally. And we are neither of us, in the way that counts to Mace Windu, Jedi: I was expelled and you left of your own volition. If the Council had any kind of secret records of the Dai Bendu, which is quite likely, Mace probably thinks it his duty to preserve that secrecy — or at least keep it among the ‘real’ Jedi.”

It's stupidity, this duty, a deliberate blindness to the reality. In the whole of the Galaxy, there are but five Jedi remaining, scattered among the stars. Five Jedi, and anyone else who may have survived, and — and Anakin. 

Tears sting at her eyes; Ahsoka presses into Barriss’ space, fingers tangling together. Barriss says nothing, but rubs Ahsoka’s knuckles with her thumb, a gentle, soothingly repetitive path of contact. 

At length, Barriss tells her, soft as a confession, “Whatever happens on Thape — you should know—” Her fingers tighten around Ahsoka’s, a spasm of disquiet. 

Ahsoka shifts, turns on her side to face Barriss.

Throat working, Barriss says, “I will follow you. Anywhere. If you will have me.”

She stills, breath caught like a bird in her throat, a sweet and tender ache like a bruise, a kiss, around that heavy grief between her lungs. It suffuses through her, this feeling, a glimmering, radiant thing, and it’s trust, it’s hope, it’s gratitude; it’s love. Ahsoka knew this, or expected it; she would not have been so wounded by Barriss’ betrayal if she did not love her, in whatever way — as a friend, a colleague, a — an attachment.

Barriss, unmoving at her side, is waiting, avoiding Ahsoka’s gaze, and Ahsoka can feel that agonizing trepidation like it’s her own through the Force, like the whine of a vibroblade too close to skin, and that, that isn’t necessary. As much as Barriss has hurt her, they have every reason in the Galaxy to protect each other now, and does it really matter if love begins or ends that list or is lost somewhere in the middle? They are what remains, what survives of their people, and that doesn’t begin to make up for the Jedi they lost in the purge, but it can be enough, if they let it. If Ahsoka lets it.

“Barriss,” Ahsoka whispers, and Barriss shudders, shivers, turns to meet her gaze as though expecting the blinding sun, and Ahsoka — tentative, a little clumsy with it, unused to this precise set of actions — Ahsoka cups Barriss’ cheek, and kisses her.

It terrifies her, in a quiet, panicked way, this press of mouth to mouth, the bump of noses and click of teeth between the two of them — what to do with her lips, now that they touch Barriss’? Her tongue? Her hand — is it uncomfortable for Barriss to have it unmoving on her cheek, or reassuring, or something else entirely? At once, Ahsoka wants to push closer and to pull away; caught between the two instincts, she freezes. A touch could shatter her.

Barriss’ hand creeps up to twine with Ahsoka’s on her cheek. Ahsoka pulls back; Barriss is staring at her, blue eyes wide, mouth a moue of misery. 

“Barriss,” Ahsoka whispers, horrified at herself — how could she _do_ this without asking, without checking to make sure it was wanted, reciprocated — kriff, was it _that bad_ a kiss — “Barriss, I’m so sorry—”

Barriss squeezes her eyes shut, head shaking minutely from side to side. “This isn’t happening,” she breathes, almost too faint for Ahsoka to hear — “this isn’t real, this is all in your head, this isn’t happening—”

“No, Barriss—” Ahsoka whispers, pulling quickly away and doubting herself immediately — will this help Barriss navigate her mind’s untrustworthiness or hinder her? “Barriss, Barriss, I’m here, this is real, I’m — I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kissed you, I’m so sorry — but this is real—”

But Barriss pulls abruptly away, teeth bared in the snarl of a cornered animal. _“Murderer,”_ she hisses, and Ahsoka can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but scramble to her feet and run. 

 

 

It’s impossible to say who’s more surprised, Ahsoka or Mace, when she finds herself in the medbay.

Mace looks at her, dubiously inscrutable, and frowns. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?” 

Ahsoka breathes. _Not my master,_ she wants to scream, and doesn’t, biting the words back until they are small enough to swallow. “I could say the same to you.”

Mace’s frown deepens, settling into his face like a scar into stone. He watches her, his stare heavy on her shoulders, as she moves listlessly around the room, passing her hands over medicines and tools to feel them out with the Force, eventually collapsing to the bench. Her lekku hang over her lap, a graceful, comforting weight, but for once Ahsoka envies humans and their hair, how it can fall over their faces like water, like a veil to keep out unwanted eyes.

“Ahsoka,” Mace says quietly. “What happened?”

She looks at him, opens her mouth, and bursts into tears. Where to kriffing _begin?_ Palpatine, and the Republic — the Jedi, making her a witness to their deaths — Mace and his cold distrust and disapproval — Barriss and her madness, her kriffing mixed signals — and — and Anakin. Anakin. Stupid arrogant man, always needing to be the best, even at breaking her heart.

“Alright,” Mace says eventually, when Ahsoka’s grief has died down to tight, hiccuping sobs. “Alright.”

“Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay,” Ahsoka says, voice strung thread-thin and worn. 

“Alright,” Mace says again. “Is there something you would like me to say?”

She can’t talk to Mace about Anakin — he hated Anakin, won’t ever understand, but—

“Why do you hate me,” Ahsoka whispers.

A pause.

“Where in the Sith hells did you get the idea that I hated you?” Mace demands.

Tears burn like acid in her eyes. “Don’t _patronize_ me,” she snaps. “You can’t stand me, you can hardly bear looking at me, you were so ready to believe I was the Temple bomber—”

“This isn’t about the bombing,” Mace says, cold and infuriating. “Search your feelings, Ahsoka. You know I don’t hate you.”

“Right,” Ahsoka retorts, “path to the Dark Side and all, how unbecoming of a Jedi Master.”

Mace looks ready to throttle her. “I will ignore that,” he says, implacably calm, “because you are upset. Is this about the Emperor? Skywalker?” His expression shifts. 

_“Don’t,”_ she grits out. For a long moment, he watches her. 

“Come here,” Mace says, not unkindly. “Sit. We could both use some meditation.”

Ahsoka swallows, wanting and lonely and afraid. Mace, staring at her from his medicapsule, sees it all.

“Come,” he says again. “I’ll help you.”

 

 

Sinking into meditation is like drifting away into sleep, into space. Dark, primordial, pierced through with light. And Ahsoka, herself shining and in agony from it, trying to resist the pull of gravity. 

In the dark, Barriss recoils from her all over again. Ahsoka closes her eyes.

“It is not your fault,” Mace tells her, unexpectedly gentle. 

“I know.” She forces the words out. “None of this is my fault. But I'm always the one who walks away with another scar.”

Mace is quiet; the violet sense of him shivers in the black. “But you walk away. Not many can say the same.”

On the ship, Ahsoka might bite these words back. In the Force, there is no allowance for anything less than the truth.

“I want to earn my scars,” she says quietly. “I don’t want to be a casualty again.”

“And Barriss?”

Ahsoka takes a moment. Breathes, or matches her body to the pulse of the universe. “I don’t want to be hurt by her,” she whispers. “I don’t want to hurt her. But I don’t know if either of us are capable of not hurting the other.”

Mace makes a considering sound. She turns to him.

“You like us together even less than you like us apart,” she says. He hears the question.

“This is a new era,” he says. “We need new rules. The old ways of the Jedi failed us.”

Grief breaks over her like a wave. An avalanche. A handful of earth scattering on her grave. 

“Don’t mince words on my account,” Ahsoka says. “Anakin failed us.”

Mace quiets. “Let me show you something.”

She trails behind him as he drifts in the blackness, reluctant and searching. 

“This is the night it all ended,” he says, and suddenly they are in the Chancellor’s chambers. 

There are bodies strewn across the steps. Kit Fisto. Agen Kolar. Saesee Tiin. At the great curve of transparisteel, Palpatine shrinks from Mace, a red-bladed lightsaber arcing out across the Coruscant skyline. Mace raises his saber, poised for the final blow—

And Anakin rushes in. 

“Anakin,” Palpatine cries, thready, desperate, pitiable. “I told you it would come to this — I was right — the Jedi are taking over!”

“The oppression of the Sith will never return,” Mace rebuts. “You have _lost.”_

Palpatine’s expression twists, somehow, grotesque and gruesome, a snarl tearing through his throat, and Anakin stands still, says nothing, tears streaking down his cheeks. Her master, who never stopped moving, who never shut up, who laughed and glowered and blustered and sulked but did not cry—

Her heart, it breaks. 

Blue lightning burns through the air, deflected from Mace’s saber back upon Palpatine, and Anakin recoils, unable to watch.

“I have the power to save the one you love,” Palpatine wheezes, his face changing, his eyes discolouring, and she _knows,_ like she knows saber forms and Tatooine teas, with bone-deep blood-borne love. _“You must choose.”_

And Mace declares himself judge and executioner, and Palpatine feigns frailty, and Anakin scrambles for answers, _he must stand trial — it’s not the Jedi way —_

And then there is pain, and light, and a voice screaming into the dark, _what have i done what have i done what have i done_

 

 

Ahsoka comes back to herself violently, like falling from a great height. Mace is watching her steadily. Her hands are too tight on his. One by one, she relaxes each finger until she can release him, and still, he says nothing.

Eventually, she finds her voice.

“You must never show that to Padmé,” she says. “Never.”

“Does it help you?”

Ahsoka squeezes her eyes shut. “It hurts,” she says. “It breaks my heart. I understand and it wounds me. Like the Temple” —the screams and the death and the unrelenting anguish— “all over again. And worse.”

“And yet,” Mace says, “you look at him and see your friend.”

She bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood. The younglings. Mace’s hand. The Jedi extinguished like so many stars. Padmé and Obi-Wan and herself, even, ruined upon their love for him.

She doesn’t answer, doesn’t need to, and pulls away.

At last, she says, “Barriss—before. She said she’d follow me, if I would let her.”

“I believe that to be true,” Mace says, “if nothing else is. She is bound to you of her own volition. She could no more abandon you than cut out her own heart.”

“That’s comforting,” Ahsoka says drily, but sincerity throbs beneath her ribs.

“So. Where will she follow you?”

“We’ll wait to meet with Padmé and Obi-Wan. But after that—” She swallows.

Mace watches her, dark eyes unblinking.

She closes her teeth around the truth. “I don’t know.”

She doesn’t need to see his face to know he doesn’t believe her, but then, she doesn’t need him to believe her.

Ahsoka knows exactly what she will do, with Barriss or without her. It is the only possible mission. Anakin — if he is as ruined as the rest of them, another walking wounded, another body on the pyre of Palpatine’s ambition —

Anakin is alive, and if he is alive, he can be saved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaaand THERE IT IS. i hope it lived up to your expectations. i hope you're all safe and well in these terrifying times. i'm in a thesis swamp the size of dagobah, and then i'm moving all summer, so this might be the last you hear from me for a while. but this fic is NOT ABANDONED. i love it to bits and i am v committed to finishing it in its whole trilogy style.
> 
> love to you all. be brave.


	10. ten: reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reunion.

_i. padmé_

“Hutt Space, I think, would be best,” Sabé says sleepily. 

Padmé, barely awake herself, hums a query. Leia shifts on her breast, nipple easing from her mouth. Between them, Luke stretches, his tiny hands curled in on themselves like waves. 

Padmé rouses herself slightly. “Not to _live_ ,” she murmurs; “I won’t raise them in a slave territory.” It’s the absolute least she can do, as their mother, as Anakin’s wife. Her children will never know the thousand cruelties and humiliations of slavery. 

But she and Sabé have been circling the issue of staying planetside. The twins are so young, still developing; artificial gravity and ultraviolet lamps aren’t doing their bone density or vitamin intake any favours. 

“Mm. No.” Sabé shifts to her side, careful of Luke. “To release the clone data.”

Padmé sighs back into the rest of half-sleep. Sabé’s voice lulls her, as soothing as the low rush of the tide, the clean milky scent at the crown of Leia’s fragile head, the warmth of her son and her partner tucked securely against her.

“Thirty hours, I think, is our window,” Sabé murmurs. “Once we reach Hutt Space. You’ll need to make a statement verifying its provenance. Rex and Cody, too. Shaak, if she’s willing.”

“Bail will be furious.” She had been meant to stay in the shadows, a secret weapon, but Padmé has, truly, never been good at keeping quiet in the face of injustice. 

“Dear heart.” Sabé’s voice is warm with affection. “I’m sure he already is.”

 

 

_ii. dormé_

Thape shines gently up at them, where they float in sunside orbit. Dormé swallows— _last chance to keep this secret,_ she thinks—and activates the ship’s holotransponder. Stowed behind her, Arnine whirs to alertness. 

“Groundwater, this is Sando. Requesting permission to land.”

She waits. “You have our clearance codes ready?” she asks Arnine. It whistles, a faintly indignant affirmative. 

No response; she waits another five minutes. “Groundwater, this is Sando. I am under authorisation from the House of Tides and the Royal House of Naboo. Requesting permission to land.”

Moteé slides into the copilot’s seat. “Any word?”

Dormé shakes her head, anxiety roiling under her breastbone. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“You’ll jinx us,” Moteé scolds, but halfheartedly. Her eyes are distant, sorting through possibilities. 

“You were stationed here. Is this usual?”

“The Republic has fallen,” Moteé says. “Nothing is usual…but I would expect them to be on high alert. No word at all?”

“None,” Dormé tells her. “And I have hailed them twice.”

“I see two possibilities.” Moteé drums her fingers on her thigh. “Either they are overwhelmed by refugees and agents—”

“—or the Empire beat us here,” Dormé finished. “How terribly inconvenient that the Chancellor is Naboo.”

Moteé leans forward to examine the fuel gauge. “Enough for a few more jumps, but we’d do well to change ships. What’s our alternative?”

Dormé rubs at her brow. “Master Windu is the only one who will like this,” she says, sour and too tired to help it. “Dagobah.”

“Arnine?” Moteé prompts, before turning back to Dormé. “I’m not familiar with it. What’s there?”

“Yoda. No Republic—or Imperial, rather, presence. It’s a glorified fungus. But if we cannot rendezvous with Padmé on Thape, Dagobah is our next best bet.”

Moteé nods, staring out past the transparisteel at the sunlit side of Thape. “You want to tell them, or shall I?”

“I will,” Dormé says wearily. “You and Arnine plot our course.”

Arnine whistles; Moteé pulls up localised galactic charts. “Tatooine’s not far.”

Dormé closes her eyes. “Ancestors help us,” she says, and leaves.

 

 

_iii. ahsoka_

The tea shivers in the cup between her hands: dark, green, with a sharp clean scent. Ahsoka inhales, and tries to clear her mind.

“Ahsoka,” says a voice from the mess’ doorway: Rabé, the warmth of her skin augmented by jewelled tones. Ahsoka turns toward her, nodding in acknowledgement. After last night’s discussion with Mace, she’s exhausted her words, her voice. She just wants to rest.

Rabé studies her, dark eyes sharp as the scent of the tea. “You’ve been to Tatooine before?”

“Yes,” Ahsoka says warily, mind jumping, paranoid, to thoughts of marooning. Had Mace seen through her untruths, her deliberate veiling of her intent, after all? But why Tatooine?

“Good,” Rabé says briskly. “You and I will disembark, then. We require a new ship.”

So, not marooning. Is he sending her away?

“Why?” Ahsoka asks. “I thought we were going to Thape?”

“We suspect the Empire may have beaten us to the stronghold,” Rabé says. “No one is answering our hails. Tatooine is close enough, and unregulated enough, to make it the ideal place to exchange our ship.”

“I mean, yeah,” says Ahsoka, jogging as Rabé moves purposefully through the ship. “But it’s _Tatooine._ Everyone there who has a ship to sell is a criminal, which means that their ships are likely to be on Republic watch lists.”

“Yes. Which is why you’re coming with me. Come help me find something to wear so I don’t stand out.”

Rabé will always stand out, Ahsoka thinks privately; she’s too beautiful to fade quietly into the background. But she follows Rabé into the cargo hold anyway, where Dormé is already sorting through the contents of Padmé Amidala’s previous life. 

“We’re going to Tatooine?” Ahsoka asks, looking to Dormé. “Seriously?”

Dormé pauses, visibly taking a moment to consider her response, the rapidity of her mind somehow communicated through the perfect stillness of her body. At length, she sets down the fine silks and elaborate brocades and steps in front of Ahsoka, her dark eyes kind and—not earnest, that’s not the word; Dormé has perhaps never learned to be earnest. It’s a serious sincerity, or something like it, an awareness that this would not be asked of Ahsoka if there were another choice; that perhaps it should not be asked of her, but needs must.

“Yes,” Dormé says gently. “I know it will be difficult. I know this was Anakin Skywalker’s home. But I have faith in you, Ahsoka.” 

Anakin’s origin had barely occurred to her, so caught up was she in the immediate tactical necessities, the enduring trauma of the Empire’s violent birth. It strikes her hard, like a fist to the solar plexus, this undemanding kindness. That the burden is acknowledged at all renders it bearable, small and smooth as a pebble tucked into a pocket. Ahsoka swallows, and nods. 

There’s a quiet pride in the way Dormé looks at her, the way Ahsoka imagines an older sister might regard a younger, and when Dormé hugs her goodbye, the twin suns blistering the sky, courage unfurls warmly in her. 

 

 

Wrapped head-to-toe in worn beige cloth, montrals chafing at the confinement, Ahsoka and Rabé make the trek to the settlement Dormé had chosen. Freetown’s only two klicks east of the ship: plenty close enough for a quick getaway, if needed, and at enough distance for peace of mind. “It’s small,” Dormé had said, scanning the holomap on the ship, “so we won’t have much choice—but it’s not associated with the Hutts, and there hasn’t been a slave there for twenty years.”

“Good,” Ahsoka had said with grim, vicious satisfaction, and followed Rabé into the sands.

By the time they arrive, nearly forty minutes later—the sand had sucked malignantly at their boots, slowing them down—the suns are high in the sky, blistering the air. Rabé shares one of their water bottles. “Let’s get some news,” she says.

“Shouldn’t we be prioritizing speed?” Ahsoka asks.

“We’re spies, Ahsoka,” Rabé says. “We always need news and we always need speed. At the moment, the former outweighs the latter. Ah! There’s a cantina.”

They settle in at the bar. Ahsoka peels off her goggles, but keeps her face otherwise wrapped. Togruta are rarer than humans; if she can keep her species to herself, it’s to their advantage.

The cantina isn’t terribly busy—small town, likely less prone to the excess of Mos Eisley or Mos Espa—but the holo’s on, and Ahsoka’s borrowed a datapad from the stack of house tech to find it preloaded with local news: community updates, proposed ordnances, town assemblies, some editorials on the demise of the Republic. The gist of the editorials seems to be _good riddance—what’d the Republic ever do for us anyway—_ right up until last night, when the tone abruptly changes to _coup, hostile takeover, conspiracy of the millennia—_. Curious as to what changed, Ahsoka opens the latest article, as Rabé orders their drinks.

The headline guts her: As soon as Rabé is back in range, Ahsoka clutches at her arm. “Hey,” she hisses, “have you seen this?”

Rabé leans in, and tenses. “There’s a holovid,” she says tightly. “Play it.”

Padmé flickers into blue-lighted being before them. Very faintly, Ahsoka can see indistinct markings on her cheeks and mouth; she does not understand them, or the elaborate disk of her hair, or the stylized brocade of her top defining her slim waist, but Rabé must, because her fingers tighten painfully on Ahsoka’s arm.

 _My fellow beings,_ Padmé says. _My friends, my allies, my adversaries. I come to you now with news of treachery of the highest order. The very governing body that commissioned the creation of a clone army embedded within each individual being the cruelest destruction: the refusal of personhood._

She’s smart about how she lays it out, calm, clear, with just enough passion to enliven her speech without discrediting herself. Hook them with a lead, and build a case step by step, pulling on threads from years before the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan Kenobi steps in to tell about his initial investigation into Kamino all those years ago; Rex and Cody— _they’re alive!—_ tell Fives’ story, his quirks and hopes and naming and fears. The loss of their brother, their grief at his death—at what could only have been his murder. Their determination to give him justice—the justice they were born to uphold. And Shaak Ti— _alive! not alone, not the last of the Jedi—_ takes her turn, explaining her final mission to the cloners, her resolve to understand why the soldiers she herself had trained had turned on her colleagues, her siblings, her family. And Padmé brings it home, reiterating each scrap of proof offered and uniting it into a cohesive whole. The Republic was duped and deceived and destroyed. That which sought to protect it dealt the killing blow. It was made to by the one man who gained the most from the rise of the Empire: Sheev Palpatine, who wrote himself a door into each soldier’s head, who could overpower their very selfhood with a simple phrase, relayed throughout the Galaxy in a matter of hours thanks to the war he had engineered.

 _Slaves_ , Padmé says, on the holovid, her voice shaking with fury. _He took the men who dedicated their every action to our protection and went beyond the already egregious wrongs committed against them. He obliterated their will. He destroyed their agency. He twisted them into slaves, and disposed of them like so much trash once they had served his purpose._

Their server, a tall, gaunt Twi’lek, grunts as xe delivers their drinks—a tall glass of water for Rabé, a protein shake for Ahsoka. “Typical Core attitude,” xe mutters, “like the clones weren’t slaves already.”

Ahsoka opens her mouth to dispute the matter, but Rabé elbows her ungently. “Designed as a commodity for war,” Rabé says, her tone an earnest agreement with their server, “and given no choice in their lives or their deaths.”

“Slaves,” says their server again, a new respect in xyr eyes. “Didn’t catch what you’re in town for.”

“We need a ship,” Rabé says. “Unmarked and unregistered, if possible.”

The Twi’lek looks at them appraisingly. “You fleeing trouble or making it?”

“Both,” says Rabé, “if we can manage.”

Xe grunts. “Knew I liked you. Try Waeti Vin, east end of town. He’s got ships and a soft spot for troublemakers.”

“Thank you,” Rabé says, and drains her water. 

 

 

_iv. sabé_

The air of Kashyyyk is thick, humid. It smells of salt, from the sea, and the citric fragrance of evergreens, and the ready fertility of earth underneath it all. Sabé loves it immediately.

Padmé catches her shoulder, her chin, with a hand as light as the sun. Sabé holds her gaze, locking the sight of those warm brown eyes into her heart, and projects surety, reassurance, as fiercely as she can. It does not ease the worry shivering through Padmé, but that is just Padmé: she will always worry, and she will always trust, and she will always love. It is her way.

Padmé kisses her, soft, lingering, and tucks her nose into the joint of Sabé’s neck. So small, her Queen, and a great tenderness wells up in Sabé’s breast. 

“Come back to me,” Padmé whispers. _I love you._

Sabé kisses her again. “I will.” _I know._

Onshore, Obi-Wan clears his throat with delicate intent. Sabé grins, steals one more kiss, and darts down the gangplank to join the others on the silt. It sucks at her boots, but it can’t keep her down. How she’s missed this. 

The droids stayed with Padmé and the twins. Here, Shaak Ti takes point, followed by Rex and Cody, while Sabé and Obi-Wan bring up the rear. They lope across the beach, into the treeline, and slow to a jog. They’ve all given up their traditional clothes—Shaak and Obi-Wan have joined the troopers in sporting loose, practical green-and-grey camouflage. Sabé wears a dark grey jumpsuit, her hair braided into a crown around her head, and rubs some of the fine silty sand into the exposed, dangerously pale skin of her hands, her neck, her face. Night isn’t far off, and she has no confidence that they’ll discover Master Unduli before then.

They’re aiming for the last place Unduli was stationed. She won’t be there now, but it’s a good place to look for a lead while Shaak and Obi-Wan do whatever they do with the Force. 

It’s not that Sabé disbelieves in the Force; she’s not so foolish as that. It exists; she accepts that. It exists more for some than for others. She accepts that too. It does not touch her personally, but she doesn’t need it to. She confers with her ancestors, and Force-users confer with their own god. Her understanding is not required, only her acceptance. She gives it, and moves on. 

She breathes deep, holding the rich air of Kashyyyk in her lungs, tasting rain and moss and wood, fur and water and dung. The Force has nothing on this.

 

 

_v. barriss_

The nebulae of the Force glow around her: Moteé, Dormé, moving with deliberation through the ship. Rabé and Ahsoka, a gleam on Tatooine’s horizon. Mace Windu, a violet flame at her side. 

“Show me,” he says. Barriss breathes. Slows her rhythms. Draws deeper into herself, leaving a path for him to follow, as she searches out the thread of poison corrupting her arm.

It hurts, tracing its path from her heart to her insensate fingers. It shouldn’t. The limb, for all practical purposes, is dead. No amount of salves, massages, or meditations is going to change that.

At her back, Mace follows. He’s in better control of his emotions now than the first time he’d really looked at her arm; the disgust he’s certainly feeling, the revulsion, are battened down so tightly that nothing is getting through. Barriss can’t quite decide if this is an improvement or not, if she’d rather know what he really thinks. Forewarned is forearmed, and all, but she’s learned the lesson of violence, especially the preemptive kind. 

And, she’s—tired, so tired, of being on her guard. 

Synchronized, they pulse down the Force-construct of her limb, moving like blood would move, if it still moved as it was meant to instead of with the sluggish flow of a waste-polluted river. It hurts. It always hurts. Not that she deserves anything less, but—it hurts, and she wants it to stop. She wants, childishly, for Mace to make it stop. 

“Ah,” he says quietly, and Barriss opens her eyes to the medbay. Hope pries open her ribs, her flesh, leaving her heart exposed and vulnerable to the most casual of cruelties. 

“You’ve encountered something like this before?” How her voice betrays her; how she eternally betrays herself.

Mace watches her, steady, a hint of wariness. Within him, within the Force, Barriss senses twin impulses of pity and righteousness. 

“I have,” he says finally. A knife to the heart she herself bared. 

“It cannot be healed,” she says, dull. She does not deserve healing. 

“No,” Mace says. “It cannot be undone. But it may yet be stopped.”

“Amputation?”

“It may come to that. Likely, it will come to that. But that is not what I mean, Barriss.” Mace shifts, his own healing discomfiting, and angles his head to catch her gaze. Holding it is unbearable; it is the only thing she can do, even as her eyes sting and her breath rattles treacherously along her trachea. 

“Barriss,” Mace says, pity winning over righteousness, “you have done this to yourself.”

A faint ringing in her ears. Too-bright light blurring her vision, eyes painfully wide, tears testing the limits of surface tension. Her one hand shaking in her lap, so badly as to leave bruises under her skirt. Her breath, though she cannot hear it, scraping her lungs raw as it comes faster and faster until she’s sobbing in the medbay, weeping in self-pity, undeserved as it is, her grief and her horror racking her frame violently, uncaringly, in self-flagellation. 

After a time, already-meager stores of energy depleted, she comes back to herself. Numb, exposed like a wound on a battlefield; aware enough to know she hurts but not to do anything about it; Mace Windu speaking softly, with unprecedented gentleness, his prosthetic hand over her shriveled one.

“I think,” he says, still soft, once she can bear to hear him, “that you should stay on Dagobah with me and Yoda.”

Barriss flinches again, her promise to Ahsoka a burden she cannot forsake. “I promised her,” she whispers. Her voice is too weak for anything stronger.

“I know,” Mace says. “I know.” He sounds so much sadder than he has a right to—sadder than she’s ever heard him. “But you need to forgive yourself, Barriss, if you want to help her.” He pauses, and adds: “If you want to love her, and be loved by her.”

Another tear leaks down her cheek, salt crusting over her tattoos. 

“You cannot help her, Barriss, if you are using her to hurt yourself. And you cannot protect her from that if you cannot protect yourself.”

“All I want is to protect her,” Barriss breathes, the confession wrenched from her with all the agony of a bone being set back into place. “As I failed to do. It is the only thing I can do. The only future I can see.”

Mace says gently, “There are many possible futures, Barriss. Not even Yoda can see them all.”

She shakes her head. “I cannot live with myself if I don’t protect her. If I abandon her again.”

“Barriss,” Mace says quietly, “you’re barely living with yourself now. You hurt yourself. You will kill yourself if you do not learn forgiveness.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. Had it been said with compassion, concern— _I’m worried about you—_ she could have brushed it off, _don’t be, I’m fine, or I will be._ But said as Mace said it, with calm inevitability, a fact of life as incontrovertible as the tattoos on her cheeks or the laws of gravity or the wounded aching in Ahsoka’s eyes after the kiss; it breaks her. An odd, terrible peace sinks around her, a funereal shroud of acceptance. It’s enough to make her long for her dreams of death. 

“Talk to Ahsoka,” Mace says. Barriss shudders. 

“Alright,” she says. “Alright.”

 

 

_vi. sabé_

It’s Shaak who finds Luminara Unduli, chasing Force-signatures like a Loth-cat tracing a scent. Two days of marching through rain-swept woods, curling together at night for a scant six hours of sleep, foraging for mushrooms and nuts and berries to supplement their rations, or hunting small game in Shaak’s case, until Sabé feels like nothing so much as a swift, lean creature born of the forest. Idly, she wonders if she could persuade Padmé to settle in a place like this, if she could teach the twins to climb trees as they learned to walk, if Padmé would cry out in the dark, the forest rustling and groaning around her, when Sabé slipped her fingers between her thighs. The thought coils, warm and content, in her belly, and Sabé runs all the faster, slicing a grin at Obi-Wan as she passes him.

Unduli is hidden away near the forest canopy, tucked into a hollowed trunk far above an abandoned Wookiee lodge. She’s feverish, barely conscious, a puncture wound on her leg swollen with pus, but she stirs enough to recognize Obi-Wan and Shaak, and that she’s as safe as she can hope to be, before they try to move her.

Sabé ducks out of the trunk and settles on a broad bough, savoring the fresh air and reaching for her comm. “Hello, my love,” she says, when Padmé picks up, warmth effusive in her heart. “Ready to pick us up?”

 

 

_viii. dagobah_

Luminara Unduli in need of more medical care than they can provide, Padmé reluctantly agrees to head for Dagobah. “Master Yoda and Shaak and I, together, will be able to heal her,” Obi-Wan says, voice low. “But it will take all of us.”

Padmé has not forgotten Yoda’s mistrust, or his attempts to steal her children from her; but she remembers, too, Bail’s entreaties to preserve the relationship for the good of the galaxy, and Master Unduli does need a great deal of help. She swallows her pride and as much of her fear as she can, and leaves Obi-Wan to chart their course with Artoo.

At night, Sabé curls around her protectively, one fine-boned hand sweeping down Padmé’s flank in soothing repetition. The twins are nestled in their crib at the foot of the bed she and Sabé share, and Padmé cannot take her eyes from them. Wonder, and terror, and love so terrible as to make the very mountains tremble: this is what it is, to be a parent. Dimly, she wonders if this is how Anakin felt, trapped in his visions of a future that did not come to pass.

“I will die before they are taken from you,” Sabé whispers to her fiercely. “I swear it.”

Padmé catches her hand, presses it to her mouth. “Don’t you die on me. I couldn’t bear it.”

“My heart,” Sabé says softly. “You could. You would. But I will endeavour to stay with you as long as you’ll have me.”

“Then that is all I will ask of you,” Padmé says. She shifts in the circle of Sabé’s arms, turning until she can press a kiss to her mouth, tuck her head under Sabé’s chin, her nose pressed to the notch of her clavicle. 

She wakes in the night, restless and uneasy, and slips from the bedroom in search of the fresher, or a cup of tea, something to still the thrumming in her veins, but there’s a light on in the cockpit.

It’s Obi-Wan.

He squints at her, tearing his eyes from the blue streaks of hyperspace blurring by. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” she says. 

He smiles, melancholic. “Qui-Gon Jinn used to tell me I worried overmuch for the future,” he says. “‘Focus on the Living Force,’ he told me. I find myself still struggling to learn that lesson.”

“The future being what it is, I don’t blame you,” Padmé says gently.

“I left things badly with Yoda,” Obi-Wan says. “I failed him, and the Galaxy.”

Padmé thinks of Anakin, bloody-mouthed and vulnerable on the landing platform at Mustafar; the look on Obi-Wan’s face as he saw her dagger in Anakin’s chest; her own horror at the blood that still stained her hands, hours after they’d left.

“No more than I did,” she says quietly. “It would have been…prudent, if we had ensured his death.”

“I couldn’t bear that,” Obi-Wan says. His voice cracks. “He was my best friend, my brother—I could not kill him.”

She reaches for him, clasps his hand in hers. “I know.”

They sit in silence for a long moment. Ghosts fill the space between them. 

“It becomes easier,” Padmé says, “to understand how Anakin could have been driven to do such terrible things.”

“Does it?” Obi-Wan asks bleakly.

She sighs, rubs at her brow. “I did not know him as well as I should have,” she admits. “I did not understand him as well as I should have. But I look at my children and I wonder if there is anything I would not sacrifice to keep them safe? Had I Anakin’s powers, would I have made his choices? I don’t know the answer, and I’m afraid to know it.”

“Dear Padmé,” Obi-Wan says. “You know the answer. You have no need for fear. Anakin offered his power to you. He offered you the Galaxy on a bloody platter, and you refused him.”

“I loved the Republic more than I love Anakin,” she says. “I am not certain that is the case for my children.”

He looks at her closely. “Perhaps it is not,” he acknowledges. “But you remain yourself. You believe that the best future for your children is a democratic one, do you not? You intend to continue to fight for a new beginning as you raise them, do you not? If I know you at all—and after thirteen years, I would like to think that I do—then I know you would give everything for peace, for freedom, for a better future.”

“I do not know if I would give my children,” Padmé says quietly.

Obi-Wan squeezes her hand. “Then I will make sure that is never a choice you must make.”

 

 

When they arrive on Dagobah, landing at a site Obi-Wan and Shaak have chosen together, there’s another ship docked a hundred meters away through the trees and marsh. Clunky and unshapely as their own, Padmé thinks immediately of exchanging Nubian starships for something less noticeable. This is Dormé’s, then, which means—

“Padmé!”

She turns in time to see— _Ancestors, thank you for this blessing_ —Ahsoka, lekku swaying as she runs, navigating fallen logs and boulders and water with enviable ease, straight to Padmé. And Padmé—what else can she, would she do? She runs to Ahsoka, too.

“Ahsoka,” she gasps, the shock of their collision wresting the air from her lungs. “Oh, ancestors, Ahsoka—you’re alive, are you hurt?” Her hands pat down Ahsoka’s arms, ribs, of their own accord, seeking injury; she pushes Ahsoka back a step to look her over more carefully, and, satisfied that there is no urgent medical need, pulls her back into a tight hug. “Ancestors, Ahsoka,” Padmé breathes, weepy, “I’m so glad to see you.”

“Padmé,” Ahsoka says, and she’s crying too—“Padmé, you saved us—you sent Dormé for us—is it true—?” And then, pulling sharply away, “What in the Sith hells—?”

Padmé turns quickly, certain of danger from Ahsoka’s reaction, but no, of course not—it’s Obi-Wan and Shaak, Luminara Unduli’s medicapsule between them, Rex with Luke strapped to his front, Sabé with Leia swaddled on her back, Cody bringing up the rear. On the gangplank, wisely avoiding the swampy terrain, Threepio and Artoo stand guard.

“Oh, Force,” Ahsoka whispers, crying again, and runs forward, barreling into Obi-Wan for a hug he returns just as fiercely, bowing uncertainly to Shaak, who reaches out to her with kindness in her hands; a careful hug for Rex, a less careful one for Cody, another uncertain bow to Sabé, who returns it gracefully. “I’ve heard so much of you, Ahsoka,” Sabé says warmly. “It is an honour to meet you at last.”

And then, Dormé appears through the trees, and Rabé, and Moteé, and Padmé runs to them with all of Ahsoka’s eagerness, to her sisters, her best friends, rushing to the warmth of their arms with tears on her cheeks and love in her heart. “We didn’t hear from you!” she cries; Dormé’s arms tighten around her. “I feared the worst—but you are alright—and Rabé, my dear, and Moteé—oh, I missed you so—I am so happy to see you—”

There are kisses pressed with desperate relief to her cheeks, her brow, arms that hold her as tightly as she holds them, with bruising, disbelieving force, as though she will float away under any less pressure. Her smile hurts with how widely it stretches her face; tears blur her eyes, and Padmé knows without a doubt that it is exactly the same for Dormé and for Rabé and for Moteé.

Not even Yoda, Padmé thinks, could ruin her happiness in this moment, here with the people she loves and trusts best in the whole Galaxy, her children and her sisters and her partner, her best friends and allies: her family.

 

 

They return to the ship Obi-Wan and Sabé had acquired; it is larger than Dormé’s new ship, so they can fit both Luminara Unduli and Mace Windu in the medbay, and—Padmé’s heart twists with ugly anger, though she swallows it down—Barriss Offee, too. Yoda joins them, limping and leaning heavily on his gimer stick, and looks at Barriss and Ahsoka for a long moment. 

At last, he exchanges a glance with Mace Windu, and sags. “Welcome you, we do, if to join us, you wish.”

Barriss doesn’t meet Ahsoka’s, or Padmé’s, eyes as she slips into the medbay, but Ahsoka stands her ground. “Another time, maybe.” Her voice shakes almost imperceptibly, but her back is straight. 

Padmé reaches for her immediately, her hands wanting to offer comfort, however Ahsoka needs it. Sabé touches Padmé’s shoulder lightly. “The mess, perhaps, and some tea; I need to catch up with our sisters.” _You’ll have it to yourself_ goes unsaid; such consultation is unnecessary between them. Padmé nods, presses a quick kiss to the corner of Sabé’s mouth, and takes Leia from her arms. 

“Luke,” she says, “where’s—” but Rex is there in an instant, her baby boy still snugged up to his chest. 

“Me ’n Cody’ll do some recon,” he says, unbinding the wrap the holds Luke securely, “unless there’s some work for us here, Padmé.”

“Do as you like,” Padmé replies, and shuffles Luke to Ahsoka’s small arms, almost missing the expression of shock and piercing vulnerability that flits across her face. “Dear Ahsoka,” she says tenderly. “Come. I’ll make us some tea.”

 

 

During the hyperspace travel between Kashyyyk and Dagobah, Obi-Wan had fashioned some scrap metal into a bassinet, using his lightsaber to weld the exterior and leaving the more delicate inside work to Artoo, who had polished every angle until absolutely nothing could hurt her children, even without the veritable mountain of blankets Threepio had gathered from around the ship. This is where Padmé lays her twins before she prepares tea.

Ahsoka watches over them, expression by turns helplessly enchanted and inscrutable. “Luke and Leia,” Padmé offers, as though Ahsoka had not heard their names from her in the hall. “—Skywalker-Naberrie.”

Ahsoka glances over at her. “Please tell me you have a less conspicuous last name for them to use.”

Any anxiety she had felt in telling Ahsoka of the twins’ parentage vanishes like mist in sunlight. “Any suggestions?”

“I’ll let you know,” Ahsoka says wryly, and comes to the table as Padmé sets out the teapot, the cups, the loose fragrant leaves. “And speaking of knowing—”

Padmé looks up. “Yes. Anakin.”

Ahsoka watches her carefully. “Dormé told me.”

“Oh,” Padmé says, and swallows. “I had hoped—well. I had thought that it would be easier, perhaps, coming from me, or from Obi-Wan. I didn’t want you to be alone with this, Ahsoka.”

“I know,” Ahsoka says, like absolution. “And I wasn’t. Dormé and Rabé, and Barriss and Mace, took care of me.”

 _Offee._ Padmé shoves the name and all of its baggage aside. Later. “If it helps at all,” she says haltingly, all her eloquence gone when she needs it most, “his—betrayal had nothing to do with you.” There’s so much she wants to say to reassure Ahsoka, so much of it true: he was always capable of this; he never intended this; he fell for love, not hate, though she suspects the two are so blurred as to be inseparable to him, now. But this feels like a lie.

Ahsoka’s quiet, staring into her tea. Finally, cautiously, she says, “I know why he fell. Do you?”

“Yes,” Padmé says softly; she does, and it hurts, a long raw wound up the centre of her that she’ll carry forever, she thinks. 

“Dormé told me about Mustafar,” says Ahsoka, each word like a step on rotted wood, searching for stability. 

Dormé would have, of course. It’s so essential to the story that Ahsoka needed—to know that Anakin was gone, that Padmé and Obi-Wan had tried, that they had done their best and failed horribly, that they were now on the run forever. Dormé could not have redacted it. 

“Yes,” says Padmé. “She would have.” The cup of tea is still warm between her hands; no longer quite so hot as to scald, but comforting. She wishes she could tuck it into her chest, where it could soothe her grief. “Ahsoka—I understand if you wish to leave, if you don’t want to stay with me and with Obi-Wan, but please—let me help you. However you need. Contacts, supplies, funds—please.”

“Padmé,” says Ahsoka, a gasp, the name is punched from her lungs. “I—why would I want to leave?”

“Because of Mustafar. Because of Anakin.”

Ahsoka opens her mouth, closes it, considers. Her hands creep forward to clasp Padmé’s, warm from her own cup of tea. 

“He’s not—gone,” Ahsoka says. “There’s still good in him.”

Padmé cannot bear to meet Ahsoka’s pleading blue eyes. “I know,” she says softly. “He is exactly who he has always been. Good and bad. But Ahsoka—I tried with Anakin. I loved him with all my heart, I tried to reach him on Mustafar, and I failed. I knew before I even saw him that last time that I would never be able to hope for him again, that it was the last time I could allow that. If I survived, I thought, my energies would be better spent elsewhere. If I didn’t, then it didn’t matter.”

Ahsoka’s gone very still. “You thought he would kill you?”

“He nearly did,” Padmé says softly. “Granted, I had stabbed him at that point, but I did not expect to survive. He had killed so many. Why would I be different?”

“He loved you,” Ahsoka insists. “You and your child. Children,” she corrects, glancing toward the bassinet. 

Does—does she not know? 

“Ahsoka,” Padmé says, with as much gentleness as she can, “Anakin led the attack on the Jedi Temple.”

Ahsoka stares at her for a few seconds in complete silence, and then bursts from her seat. Without thinking, Padmé follows; she shouts for Threepio to watch the twins as she chases after Ahsoka, past the medbay and down the gangplank, catching up to her just as Ahsoka stops retching behind a tree. 

“Ahsoka,” she tries, reaching for those too-thin shoulders, but Ahsoka flinches violently away, and Padmé drops her hands back to her sides. What can she say, or do, to lessen this wound? 

She doesn’t know. As Queen, she had spoken with those who had lost their loved ones in the Trade Federation’s camps; as Senator, she had visited refugees and offered her heart and voice to their future. Grief, suffering, she can deal with—but when she feels as culpable as the perpetrator, stained by association, what can she do? What can she possibly say to make it better?

Obi-Wan arrives before she has to find out, with Barriss Offee on his heels.

Ahsoka, cheeks salt-stained with tears, looks between the three of them, and shudders. “Obi-Wan,” she says helplessly, and Padmé is struck by how young Ahsoka is, the awfulness of this much tragedy for a girl in her youth. 

“I’m here,” Obi-Wan says, and takes her in his arms, holding her like a father would; like Padmé’s own father had held her, once upon a time. Like Anakin would never hold his own children.

“The _Temple,_ ” Ahsoka says, a plea for denial or correction, for it to have been a misunderstanding. 

“I know,” he says softly. “I saw the tapes.”

“We were there—with the dead—the Force screaming about us—It brought me to my knees, Obi-Wan. The fear, the pain, it was everywhere and—I thought, ‘I could bear it for him, for Anakin’—”

“I know,” Obi-Wan says, and Padmé does, too. How could it be borne, when he was the one who caused it?

“You are not alone, Ahsoka,” says Barriss Offee, and Ahsoka shudders in Obi-Wan’s arms. 

Padmé swallows down the part of her that wants to rip Barriss from the scene—Ahsoka was almost sentenced to _death_ because of her, this Jedi raised lightsabers to her husband, the bombing, the farce of justice authored by Barriss Offee—it’s not what Ahsoka needs. So Padmé says only, “We’re here with you, Ahsoka. As long as you need us to be.”

 

 

Barriss is the first to leave, though Obi-Wan follows soon after. “Mace and Luminara,” he says apologetically, but Ahsoka nods. Padmé shifts slightly closer on the log Ahsoka’s chosen as a bench, and waits.

“I thought there’s still good in him,” Ahsoka says at last. “When I learned that he’d betrayed the Republic, the Jedi, I thought: but he’s alive, and can still be saved.”

“Part of me wants the luxury of that thought,” says Padmé. “That faith. Part of me is ruinously relieved to not entertain it. Others will need me more. And I hope to help them.”

“So you think he’s irredeemable?”

“I think Anakin will have to redeem himself, Ahsoka,” Padmé says gently. “Whether he will, I don’t know. He’s clever enough, and strong enough. But perhaps too proud, and too loyal.”

“Too loyal to the wrong people,” Ahsoka mutters. “So what now?”

Padmé stretches, looks out through the ghoulish moss and misting waters. “We try to do good, and bring hope, however we can.”

Ahsoka nudges her. “More specifically.”

“Well. Masters Windu and Unduli will need to recover.”

“Barriss, too,” says Ahsoka.

“But we have Obi-Wan, Rex, and Cody. Shaak, you. Me, Sabé, Dormé, Rabé, and Moteé. Allies in the Delegation of Two Thousand, and particularly Alderaan and Naboo. Two ships immediately available. More possible missions than we have people to run them.”

“Tell me,” says Ahsoka. 

It feels good to get the words out, to think aloud. “I need to protect my children,” she says. “That limits the risks I am willing to personally incur. But we need to continue the search for surviving Jedi and artefacts. We need a base and a fleet for the rebellion, a home for any troopers who want one after the massacre. And I desperately want to retake Naboo.”

She hadn’t allowed that thought out; it hangs in the air between them, burning with honesty. She wants to claw her homeworld back from the Chancellor for her people, and to make him bleed.

“That’d really make the Emperor mad,” Ahsoka says warmly, and then: “What about Tatooine?”

She considers. “It will be difficult to free the slaves without destroying the Hutts. And more difficult to destroy the Hutts without a replacement infrastructure ready to go.”

“There might be one, at least a little,” Ahsoka offers. “Freetown. We stopped there to exchange our ships before coming here. It’s populated entirely by survivors. If we could send a few ships their way—or thermal shields, or supplies—that’d help a lot.”

“I’ll speak to Apailana as soon as we’re off Dagobah, then,” Padmé says. She sighs. “We need to reach out to the Separatists, too. Convince them to ally with us.”

Then, softly as a leaf hitting the water, the implications of Ahsoka’s interest in Tatooine wash over her. Padmé swallows, and says, “It won’t bring him back. You must not hope for that.”

“I don’t know how not to hope for it,” Ahsoka says quietly. “I respect that this isn’t something you can do, Padmé. But maybe it’s something I can. Maybe it’s the one thing I can do that matters.”

She stretches out, booted feet nudging a mound of moss. “The Force came to me as the Jedi were killed. I felt them. Every one of them. And the Force hid me and helped me. It brought me to Mace and to Barriss and to you. Now, it tells me that I have to hope. There’s still good in him, Padmé. I believe that. I have to. And if I can help Anakin find his way back—that could change everything for us.”

Padmé swallows, and reaches over, squeezing Ahsoka’s fingers in her own. “I hope you are right. I really do.”

 

 

“Foolish, she is,” Yoda grumbles to Padmé. They’re all gathered outside in small clusters of two or three, except for Luminara Unduli, who is still resting in the medbay, curled around the bonfire, bowls of stew and varied nutrient bars in their hands. 

At his approach, Sabé exchanges a glance with Padmé, and hoists Luke up to burp him. 

“You’ll have to be more specific if you want me to know who you’re talking about,” Padmé says primly. There are more females here than males, a fact that fills her with quiet satisfaction. 

“Young Ahsoka,” Yoda says. “Hope for Skywalker, she does.”

Sabé sighs. “All hope is foolish,” she says. “But one must have hope, if nothing else. It is all that remains when everything has been lost. We need hope now, more than ever.”

Padmé looks across the fire, where Ahsoka and Barriss are talking quietly, some inscrutable tenderness in the angle of their bodies towards each other. “We cannot choose another’s hope for them,” she says softly, with a sudden flash of understanding: she cannot choose those whom Ahsoka forgives, either. 

“No,” Yoda says, subdued. “But foolish, still, it is.”

“Anakin told me once that compassion, unconditional love, is central to a Jedi’s life,” Padmé says. “What is hope if not the future of love?”

“Do not let your grief taint the best of your Order, Master Yoda,” Sabé says gently. “Not all is lost. We can make a better future.”

He looks down at Leia, scowling in Padmé’s arms, at Luke’s inquisitive blinking from Sabé’s shoulder.

“Already begun, you have,” he says.

 

 

In the end, this is how the future takes shape:

Shaak Ti stays on Dagobah to help Yoda and Barriss Offee and Mace. In three standard months, Padmé’s ship will return for her, and she will continue with them until she decides to leave.

Dormé, Rabé, and Moteé go their own way in their battered and untraceable ship, the after the clever Naboo animal. They will drop Ahsoka and Rex off on Tatooine, before continuing on with directives from the House of Tides and missions in the Mid Rim.

Ahsoka and Rex, in their own words, intend to cause some trouble on Tatooine. Padmé worries for them, can’t help it, and hugs Ahsoka tight. “You always have a place with us,” she says. “Please come back when you can.”

“I promise,” says Ahsoka, and Rex says, “So do I, for the record.”

Obi-Wan, Cody, Sabé, Padmé, and the twins will stay together. Cody gruffly mutters something about a debt, and then insists that someone has to teach the twins proper survival skills. Obi-Wan and Sabé, of course, are not going anywhere. They’ll stick to the Outer Rim and Separatist systems, using diplomacy to strengthen the fragile Alliance.

All of them will watch for Jedi and Force-sensitives in the meantime. They can’t afford not to.

 

“That’ll be a change of pace,” Sabé remarks, eyes half-closed in mirth. “Finding trouble instead of it finding us.”

“I imagine trouble will continue to find us quite easily,” Obi-Wan says drily, and Sabé laughs, clear as a bell.

In the cockpit, Artoo warbles inquiringly. Padmé lays her head on its dome. 

“Mon Calamari, please,” she says, and braces for hyperspace, and the future rushing toward her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. oh my GOD this is so late. is it at least within a year of the other one? holy shit.  
> 2\. can i blame this on grad school/moving twice/phd applications? i’m going to anyway.  
> 3\. BROUGHT TO YOU BY....... the latest episode of star wars rebels. i was so lost but NOW IM FOUND I WON’T SAY ANYTHING BC SPOILERS BUT IF U LIKE THIS FIC YOU’LL BE AT LEAST AS HAPPY AS I WAS  
> 4\. ch 11 is short and 12 is half written so DON’T PANIC, it won’t be another year before updates god I hope  
> 5\. im so behind on comments but y’all are the light of my life, you’ve kept me going, i love everyone


	11. eleven: bail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bail Organa, in the Empire’s shadow.

 

 

Bail Organa wakes to the dim glow of a data pad and the soft _clink_ of a teacup in its saucer. 

“Good morning,” Breha says. “Senator Amidala is causing trouble again.”

Bail groans, and scrubs at his face. “For once,” he says, swinging out of bed, “I wish she would take a day off.”

“Oh, querido,” Breha says fondly. “No, you don’t.”

 

 

For practicality’s sake, Bail is less involved in the Rebellion than his Queen, at least so far as immediate actions go. It’s Breha who oversees appointments at the Ministry of Education, and who pins medals to graduates of Alderaan’s flight academies, and who overseas the distribution of food and housing and employment to arrived refugees. And if those appointees have mastered the art of subtle sedition, or if those graduates find encoded directions to Rebellion contacts on their medals, or if those refugees turn the opportunities that Alderaan gifts them into ways to strike back at the Empire, well—Bail is just the Queen’s consort. He has no say in her rule over Alderaan. 

His job is to arrange interplanetary opportunities should the need arise: should the sedition lose its subtlety, or should pilots need transport unlikely to raise Imperial eyebrows, or should refugees require sudden repatriation. Or any number of other scenarios. And that’s just the stuff that he has to coordinate with the Queen. The rest of it, the Senate sessions that chain him to Coruscant, is another matter entirely.

 

 

It could be worse. He knows it could. Padmé could be dead; the Delegation of 2000 could be disbanded or terrified or arrested and thus powerless. Silence could shroud the hyperlanes and obscure the Empire’s crimes.

Instead, Padmé is alive, and determined that every single being in the Galaxy should know it; the Delegation is disorganised, but clamouring for action; Padmé’s voice echoes from the Outer Rim into Coruscant, ringing with conviction as she brings witnesses and evidence to every holoreceiver in the Galaxy. 

The Senate didn’t vote on that, but then, Palpatine didn’t ask it of them. This is the threat of the Empire: it acts without consultation with its subjects. The Senate is all but toothless. Its only power lies in its ability to command the attention of the Holonet. So this is what they try to do: make speeches and propose laws, organise protests and demonstrations, and do their best to protect those who join.

It’s not always possible. They learn this the hard way.

“Have care, Senator Organa,” says Senator Jamillia, Padmé’s successor. Her face, round as a moon, is drawn with anxiety. “Do not underestimate the lengths to which Palpatine will go to guard his power.”

Bail means to ask why, to follow up, but Mon touches his arm lightly and pulls him away, and in light of everything else—it slips his mind. He will hate himself for that for the rest of his life, he thinks.

Bail takes the lead on organising peaceful protest. This has always been Alderaan’s chief means of democratic engagement: to hear the people and try to respond to their arguments, especially when theirs are better. During the Clone Wars, he had organised a number of protests and demonstrations on Alderaan and on Coruscant against the war, but plagued as they were by imperialists, warmongers, and sporadic acts of terrorism, they were ineffective at best. 

Palpatine has ordered the Jedi Temple to be converted into the imperial palace—that the Empire might rise from the ashes of its greatest enemies, so the press announcement says; Obi-Wan, when he hears of it on one of their infrequent holos, breaks before Bail’s very eyes at the news, prompting a tiny blond head to appear at his knee, expression somber. Sabé, when she enters seconds later, swiftly promises to call back, and terminates the connection. 

The Temple then, where the Jedi younglings were slaughtered, is where Bail sends protestors. Everything goes wrong.

The first protest is attacked, as the Clone Wars protests were. A Separatist ship swoops overhead and drops a proton bomb into the square, killing hundreds. The Emperor entreats citizens to not gather so many to one place, thus presenting an easy target to their foes. The Separatist ship and its pilot are quickly found, interrogated, and executed.

The second protest is forcibly disbanded. The Emperor rebukes them for gathering when the danger is so high. A fight breaks out; within minutes, two are dead and twelve injured. Clone troopers arrest those who cannot get away in time.

Between the second and third protest, Palpatine enacts a moratorium on public protests and gatherings of more than ten beings. He cites the attack as cause for precaution, and the fight as cause for paternalism. 

Like the first protests, the third ends in bloodshed. Except for Bail, ushered to safety by his Alderaanian guards, and a few other similarly protected senators and states people, every single being dies, caught in a maze of blaster fire as clone troopers advance.

 

 

Senator Jamillia is waiting for him when he returns.

“You tried to warn me,” Bail says.

“Not hard enough,” she answers, gaze dropping to the floor for a few seconds. He does not contradict her. 

“Try again,” he says gruffly. There is still a sticky splatter of blood dried on his wrist; he rubs it roughly. 

“You must not underestimate him,” Jamillia says lowly. “And you must learn to see his game if you wish to play against him. There will be no visible evidence, nothing save your instincts to indicate his culpability, but you must trust them.”

“Palpatine sent the Separatist bomb,” Bail says quietly.

“Yes. And he started the riot, and it justified the law that allowed him to kill thousands just now. Those who were arrested? In labour camps as we speak. You cannot touch him, Senator. He will kill you if you try.”

“Go on record,” Bail says, leaning forward fiercely, but Jamillia leans back.

“I have no evidence,” she says. “Naboo intelligence has concluded that Palpatine sent the droid army and engineered the invasion all those years ago, did you know? He was the only one to benefit. By rights, he should stand trial. But as Chancellor, he protected and benefited Naboo. To subject him to justice would look like political assassination, and because the public adores him there, it would be me, and Apailana, and Padmé Amidala who would lose everything. Not him.”

“You’re saying it’s pointless to try?”

“No,” Jamillia says, and stands. “I am saying you must be much subtler, Senator. Play the long game. It is the only one in which you survive and the Republic may be restored.”

 

 

Bail relearns a politician’s evasiveness grudgingly. On Coruscant, he does not make waves; though he meets Mon Mothma and Riyo Chuchi for tea, they speak in ambiguities, not promises; when he speaks to Garm Bel Iblis, it is about trade between Corellia and Alderaan, and nothing more. On the rare occasions he is able to escape back to Aldera, he is there only long enough to crawl into his Queen’s arms, and let himself be held for a few fitful hours.

 

 

Eight months into Palpatine’s rule, Bail returns to his office to find the man who had been Anakin Skywalker waiting for him. The black, beetle-eyed mask he’s taken to wearing on the Emperor’s business glowers up from Bail’s desk malevolently. From the doorway, it is impossible to see Lord Vader’s eyes.

Bail pauses, and says, “I did not realise we had an appointment, my lord.”

Vader says nothing. The darkness seems to press down around them like a living thing. It is impossible to reconcile this man with the Jedi who had spoken of how to best end the war, all those months ago when Palpatine had been captured and Dooku had been killed.

Bail strides to the bar, and lifts a decanter. He knows he’s pulling the wolf-cat by the tail, knows how dangerous it is, how precarious his position, but can’t quite stop himself. “Drink?”

“No,” Vader says, and, gruffly, “thank you.”

Bail replaces the decanter with precision, and sits down. Vader has taken his own chair, behind the desk where Bail drafts speeches and reviews legislation, and Bail feels the slight acutely. “What do you want from me, my lord?”

Vader’s eyes gleam in the dark. “You’re in contact with Padmé Amidala.”

“Padmé Amidala is a traitor to and enemy of the Galactic Empire,” Bail says. “If I were in contact with her, it would be grounds for execution. I would hope you have a higher opinion of my intelligence, my lord.”

“I think I have a perfectly accurate opinion of your intelligence, Senator,” Vader retorts, and Bail can’t tell if he means the statement to be insulting or not. “I want you to pass on a message for me.”

Bail opens his mouth, but Vader raises his hand; he cannot speak. “Save your denials for the end,” says Vader. “I have no patience for them. This is the message. The Emperor is putting a bounty on her head in three days. If she turns herself in before then, she will get amnesty. Immunity. I can protect her. If not, she will be hunted from one end of the Galaxy to another, until she is either captured or”—his voice roughens—“or killed. Do you understand?”

The pressure on his throat eases into nothing. Quietly, Bail says, “Even if I did know how to contact her—the Padmé Amidala I knew would never take such an offer.”

The smile twisting Vader’s mouth is tight and bitter; not really a smile at all. “No,” he agrees, “she wouldn’t. But it’s the only way I can keep her safe.”

“Perhaps,” Bail says, and Padmé must be rubbing off on him; he _knows_ he’s a fool to say it, knows it’ll cost him, but says it anyway: “Perhaps you should have thought of that, before you put a madman on a throne.”

The next thing he knows, he’s across the room in bone-deep pain. The bar lies broken around him, shattered crystal and Alderaanian wine strewn around him like a constellation. Vader rises slowly, leisurely from the chair, and puts on the awful black mask.

“Perhaps,” he says, and his voice is suddenly deeper, more menacing. “Perhaps you should have fixed the Republic so he wasn’t the best solution.”

With a sweep of his black cloak, Vader is gone. Bail fumbles in his robes for his commlink, hands shaking, head pounding. 

“Captain Antilles,” he croaks. “Get me back to Aldera.”

 

 

Breha visits him in the recovery suite after he’s been released from the bacta tank. She kisses his forehead gently, and holds him for a moment. 

“You need to be more careful,” she says eventually. “I say this as your wife and as your Queen, Bail. You cannot court disaster like this again.”

“I know,” he says quietly. “And Padmé—?”

“We’ve passed on the message. She knows to be careful.”

“No,” Bail says despairingly. “She really doesn’t.” 

“She has more to live for, now,” Breha says, and a shadow flits across her face. “She will be more careful than she was as your colleague.”

He reaches blindly for her hand, and holds tight.

 

 

Padmé doesn’t take the offer, as predicted, and thanks are sent through a series of intermediaries. Bail purposely does not question it, nor venture any supposition as to who that series may involve. Every being involved risked their life; any guess on his part, when in proximity to Vader and the Emperor, puts them in even more danger. 

About a year after the bounty, Mon draws him aside. “You are supervising relief to Ryloth next week, aren’t you?”

She knows he is; they spoke of it two days ago.

“I need a favour,” she says. “Of a—sensitive nature.”

Treasonous, she means. “Of course,” Bail says. “You have the details?”

She presses a datastick into his palm. “Not anymore,” she says, and departs quickly, white robes swirling around her.

The datastick, when he decrypts it, has only time and coordinates; the ship, when it drops from hyperspace, is unknown to him, even though it hails them with the correct codes. The level of secrecy disquiets him, and Bail wonders why, exactly, Mon had felt it necessary, and whom she is protecting. 

But, as soon as the airlock doors open, he understands perfectly.

Padmé smiles at him, a bit shy, a bit tremulous, but with real warmth. “Hello, Bail,” she says. “How mad are you?”

Faced with this radiant, wonderful, impossible woman, Bail can only laugh.

 

 

Life on the run has treated Padmé well, Bail thinks, and tells her. She’s lost the softness of her face: every inch of her is wiry and thin, which is the only sign of hardship. She’s happier than Bail’s ever seen her; that’s what he means.

“We don’t think of it as being on the run,” Sabé explains, bouncing a chubby, curly-haired Luke on her knee. 

Padmé, with Leia in her lap, says, “Our actions are not determined by our enemies, but by our allies.”

“Which,” Sabé says drily, “is the politic way of saying we run toward danger, not from it.”

“No,” says Leia suddenly, and very gravely, her face scrunched up seriously.

“Lee!” chirps Luke.

“No!” says Leia again, louder.

Padmé rolls her eyes, starting to stand. “Luke hasn’t figured out how to say her name yet, and Leia will argue with everything. But especially that. Time for a nap, hmm?”

Luke claps his hands across the table, and Sabé presses a quick kiss to his forehead. “I’ll settle them,” she says. “You two catch up.”

“Thank you,” Padmé says warmly, and, to Leia, “Go with your Mama, alright?”

“No,” Leia says disagreeably, but lurches to her feet, hand seeking Sabé’s.

“Mama?” Bail inquires.

Padmé, miraculously, blushes. “Sabé is—my partner, in all things,” she says.

“And Anakin?” He hates himself for asking, a little bit, but remembers Vader’s desire to protect her, the violence with which he tried to do so. 

Padmé drops his gaze; her hand spreads on the table, branches diverging from the same tree. “Anakin made his choice. I’ve moved on.”

“Do you think—” Bail starts, but Padmé looks back at him abruptly, her eyes blazing in her face. 

“Bail,” she says steadily, fiercely, “I am not responsible for him. I will not be a pawn in the game the galaxy plays for his loyalty. My children, when they know enough to ask, are the only ones with the right to do so.”

“He cares for you, Padmé,” Bail says quietly. “He cared enough to skirt the question of treason against the Emperor.”

“Only skirt? Then he didn’t care enough,” Padmé says, and changes the topic. 

The rest of the visit settles into companionable plotting; advice on next moves, messages to quietly pass on, where to scout the best stolen Holonet proxies so Padmé can keep shouting her outrage into space. Bail tells her of the refugees resettled to Alderaan, the relief he coordinates to the Outer Rim; how it all seems so useless when faced with the Empire’s prisons, and war machines, and suffocation of anything remotely other. 

“I know,” says Padmé, her hurt plain on her face. “But it matters so much to the ones we manage to help, Bail. Never forget that.”

When he leaves, she hugs him, promises to pass his greetings onto Obi-Wan when he returns. Bail holds the memory of her face within him: the determined openness, the fierce love, the hope. It is the last time he sees her for years.

 

 

Time passes in grim contradiction: the days drag on, each rotation seeming to cling to sunlight so as to give the Empire more time to wreak its misery. The years pass with unremarked swiftness, until it is five years since Palpatine took power, and six, and seven. Bail feels worn at the edges, like an avalanche survivor, skin scraped bloody with a mountain’s rage. 

He does his duty. He serves his people and his Queen. He waits for the wind to change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY SHIT didn’t i tell y’all this would be quick! but i have to say, i surprised even myself. ~~THE LAST INTERLUDE OF summer, what a time 2 be alive. 
> 
> +brought to you by ANNIHILATION, feat. natalie portman’s beautiful survivalist mode and just some of the most stunning visuals i’ve seen in a film. MY GOD. GO WATCH. (it’s on Netflix outside the US, if u got a vpn handy)  
> +im ALMOST done with the last chapter—it’s not going to get longer than 10k and it’s at 7k now, so you can expect that before may. And then it might be a while of radio silence again, because i’m traveling and conferencing and writing stuff that will actually be published in real life (academic stuff. not that interesting.) and moving back to the us and starting a phd program !!!  
> +love love love to all you wonderful people for sticking with this fic. see you next time.
> 
> eta: querido, obvs, is spanish! post rogue one, lots of fics began using Spanish as Alderaanian which I thought was lovely. I, unfortunately, do not speak Spanish, so its use is v v limited.


	12. twelve: leia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life goes on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> O.O well......we made it.

 

 

Life goes on.

There’s no base of operations, nothing Leia learns to call her homeworld when some stranger asks, struggling to place an accent. Home is the _Spark_ , and the _Pikobi,_ and Yoda’s mud huts on Dagobah. Home is hyperspace streaking by. Home is Mom and Mama and Uncle Obi-Wan, Socks and the Aunties and Uncles Rex and Cody, towering Mace and careful B, and, yes, even Yoda. He smells funny, but so does the whole planet, and Yoda can make stuff float. He’s said he’ll show her, one day, but the joke’s on him, Leia thinks privately. Aunt Ti and Uncle Obi taught them to float things before she and Luke learned to speak.

Luke. Home is Luke.

They’re twins, Mom tells them, soft with love. They grew together from the time they were barely cells, curled around each other in Mom’s body like they curl around each other every night, even if Leia’s mad at him for eating the last chocolate, or he’s mad at her for dunking his model fighter plane into Threepio’s oil bath in retaliation. Even if it bewilders and hurts her, the way Uncle Obi looks at Luke, with a strange kind of miserable hope, and doesn’t ever look at Leia like that.

“Oh, my love,” Mama says tenderly when Leia complains of it to her. “Don’t envy Obi-Wan’s sorrow.”

“I don’t,” Leia replies, peevish and prickly, and she doesn’t, because it hurts to see that look on Uncle Obi’s face. But it hurts, too, that it’s not something she can share with her brother. They took their first breath together, their first steps; discovered the Force, that splendid starry web between them, together. Luke’s her brother. She loves him, is responsible for him. They should share the sad stuff, too, not just the wonder.

Luke understands, when she pushes the jumble of feeling at him that night, reaching into the Force with her to feel the shape of this hurt. And, curled close together on the bunk they share, he pushes his own thought-feeling-sense back, a warm effusion of light, and love, always, at any cost.

Leia loves her brother so much she could burst with it. Even when he sneaks the last chocolate. 

 

 

The days go like this: 

Wake up at 0700 hours. Luke is up first, inevitably, and buys her as much time as he can to grab a few extra minutes’ sleep, talking cheerfully as though to her, loud enough that Obi-Wan or Cody or Mom—whoever’s rung the bell today—can hear the exchange. Luke’s really good at imitating people, so it can sound like she’s talking even if she isn’t. Mama, who is not fooled, allows it only if Luke practices Mando’a or Bothan or Huttese instead of Basic. 

By 0715, Leia rolls out of bed and into the mess, where breakfast depends on how long ago they resupplied. Ration bars are a staple, but the grown ups make sure that she and Luke get fruits and vegetables at every meal, even ones that taste like bantha poodoo (which she’s not supposed to say). Everyone eats together, with Artoo in the cockpit to keep an eye on things. If she can manage it, Leia will scramble into Mom or Mama’s lap, and drag Luke as close as can be, folding herself into the people who love her most. 

At 0800, lessons start, depending on the mission. Cody teaches them Mando’a, and how to keep things clean (very important in an enclosed space, Cody stresses, like the _Spark_ ), and what to do when blasters are involved. This is: Don’t point them at anyone you don’t want dead, don’t pick one up unless you want someone dead, and if you don’t want to be dead, do what you’re told by one of the family. This can change based on the mission. But they’re never alone, so they’re usually on the ship or well protected from any blasters not carried by the family.

Obi-Wan, and Aunt Ti, if she’s around, or Socks, if she’s around, teach them about the Force. Meditation is boring at first, and Luke always feels restless when they start, but Uncle and Aunt and Socks are patient. And then they play push-pull, or float things, or help the hydroponic plants grow, or practice healing. 

Uncle and Socks and Mama teach them to move, like dancing, but not. Sometimes it’s slow, and Leia’s thighs burn with the effort of holding a position, but sometimes it’s fast, which is her favourite. When it’s fast, she and Luke work together, in the Force and on the ship, to solve a puzzle or wrestle Uncle Obi, and then, it’s like magic. All is as the Force wills it, Uncle Obi says, but with Luke, Leia _is_ the Force. Together, they are unstoppable. 

1200 is a break for lunch, and a nap. Luke has trouble sleeping, sometimes, restless like he is in meditation, but Leia pulls him close and flops so he can’t go anywhere. Naps are important, and so are cuddles, and if Luke can’t sleep, then she’ll help him.

 _more like smother me,_ Luke sends to her, tinged orange with exasperation and fondness, and Leia grins into his shoulder, and holds tight.

1400 is more lessons: History, from Mom, which is the _best_ , because Mom just tells them stories. She’s good at it, too, and has answers to nearly every question. She shows them holos of the places she’s been, and, when it’s safe, takes them planetside to see important sites. Mama, when she’s with them, lets them pick out a souvenir.

1500 is math. Leia _hates_ math, even if it’s with Uncle Obi-Wan, who’s one of her favourite people, and Artoo and Threepio, whom she also loves. Luke is irritatingly good at it, but Leia doesn’t get it the first time, or the third, until Luke starts projecting models into the Force between them, contextualizing the problems clumsily into hyperlane travel, or how much chocolate they’ll need to buy at the next resupply to last them another month in space. After that, Obi-Wan picks up the slack, and comes with diagrams, charts, visuals to help her contextualize the equations. 

1600 technically marks the beginning of free time, but may as well be more lessons: mechanics from Socks and Artoo and Rex and Cody, languages from Obi-Wan and Threepio. Leia and Luke learn to hotwire a door lock or a speeder before they learn how to ask someone to open a door in Mando’a. Rex says that’s how it should be, and hotwiring is more fun, anyway, so Leia agrees with him. 

Obi-Wan, while they work on whatever project Artoo and the Uncles have come up with, teaches them Bothan; if he’s busy, Threepio fills in, chattering away in Bothan or Huttese or Mando’a or Bocce. Leia thinks, pushing the sentence carefully at Luke in her very best Mando’a: _Threepio cuyir jatne briikase guuror ibic._ Threepio is happiest like this: conjugating verbs and correcting pronunciation, helping them learn to decipher the worn aurebesh engraved on the toolkit and the flight controls. 

After that, it’s this: help Threepio and Mama with dinner. Help Mom with the dishes. Sing to the hydroponic garden, so it knows it’s loved and will grow all the better for it. A story, from whomever is ready to tell one, sometimes true, sometimes not. Another meditation with Obi-Wan and Socks and Ti, with everyone else joining in, until the _Spark_ is suffused with a quiet peace, and love, and tenderness. Hugs to Rex and Cody, kisses to Mom and Mama and Uncle Obi. Mom and Mama tuck them in, in the bed they share, and say _i love you so much, my darlings, my dearest loves,_ and Leia never, ever doubts them. 

At least, that’s how it’s meant to go. It doesn’t always. 

 

 

Missions complicate things. Mama is always unflappably serene, but Mom gets anxious, holding just a little too tight to her and Luke whenever they’re separated. Her fingers go white on the edges of datapads and flimsiplast, and she spends more time with Uncle Obi-Wan than with Mama.

That’s normal, Mama tells them. Mom and Obi-Wan went through something together that the rest of them didn’t. When it echoes around them, they find solace in each other’s company, staring out at hyperspace or, one memorable occasion, getting very, very drunk on Corellian whiskey and Naboo wine. 

Leia only knows about this one through context: she hears Mama whisper the word _drunk_ at Cody when Luke and Leia are supposed to still be asleep, and can feel Mama helping Mom to bed, and Cody doing the same for Obi-Wan. In the Force, when she tugs Luke into that awareness with her, Mom and Obi-Wan feel blurred, and sad, and dim, like when they sleep, but just brushing up against them is enough to give Leia a headache for the rest of the day, and Luke spends it glowering at everyone and shielding the both of them from the rest of the ship.

Leia asks Mama at the time—what was _wrong_ , why did this _happen_ —and Mama hesitates for a long moment before kneeling down before her.

“My star,” Mama says tenderly. “You should ask your mother, when she feels better.”

“ _You’re_ my mother, too,” Leia says, irate at the non-answer, but feels immediately chagrined for her tone, and ducks incautiously forward, hugging Mama tight. She understands what Mama meant, anyway: _you should know the truth i promised not to tell._

So, a few rotations later, Luke at her back, Leia shoves into the captain’s office, where Mom works even though Cody is the captain. Mom looks up, surprise fading quickly to—oh, Leia hates that look, hates that she causes it now, but breathes out the negativity like Uncle Obi and Socks have taught her, because the Force tells her and Luke both that this is necessary, and Leia has learned to listen. 

“Oh,” Mom says; she is so beautiful, even when she is sad, love like a bird in her mouth, and Leia hurts with the love she bears for her mother, with her urgent need to protect her, with her blood and the Force singing out that this hurt is its will. “Sabé said you might come asking. Let’s talk about this.”

The first thing Mom tells them every day is that there are many sides to a story. Beings have different values and needs and priorities. From one point of view, a wrong may seem right; from another, a wrong is a wrong. This is important, Mom says, because you have to understand that nothing is neutral. Everyone is telling their own story. How they tell it depends upon what they need and what they want. No story is completely true; but no story is completely false, either. You have to look hard for the truth, and you have to do that by listening to as many sides of a story as possible.

So, when Mom begins, this is how: “I will tell you as much as I can. But you should talk to the whole family about this and hear their perspectives. I can only give you mine.”

 

 

It goes like this:

Once upon a time, a girl was asked to protect her people. She was merely the latest child in a long line of children asked to protect their people; she was not special by anything but circumstance. 

(“That is a lie,” says Mama immediately, when Luke asks. “Look at your mother and tell me she could ever be unremarkable.”

Leia agrees quietly, but she’s glad Luke asked, and glad that the rest of the family agrees with Mama, not Mom, on this.)

The circumstances were these: Once upon a time, there was a man who wanted power enough to sacrifice his homeworld in its name. Enough to sacrifice a thousand worlds. Enough to stain the Galaxy with blood until it forgot all else. 

And once upon a time, there was a boy, who loved, and grew; who loved, and fought; who loved, until he hated.

 

 

This is the story of Anakin Skywalker, Mom says. You know his name. It is yours. My light-bringer, my dragon. My children of the stars. 

Grief wells up in the space between them like blood from a wound, like water from the deep deep earth. The Force burns at the back of Leia’s neck like a solar flare. She will not make a sound.

This is the story of your father.

 

 

The girl was a Queen, and she loved her people, and she hated war. War wrought only grief, she thought, with the naïve confidence of a child, and the certainty that she was right. And she was. 

The man was a senator, and, though no one knew it, a Sith Lord: he used the Force to hurt people because he could, and because it helped him become powerful. 

Listen to me, Mom says, leaning close: there is no greater curse in the universe than power. 

The boy, though, was powerless. A slave, without rights, but who helped others with no thought to himself. He helped the Queen get to the Senate, when she needed his help; and in doing so, lost his freedom and his mother to others.

The Sith Lord sent a droid army to threaten the Queen’s people, in hopes that she would help him become Chancellor. The Queen, desperate to trust her one senatorial ally, did so. She did not understand the consequences of that desperation. This does not absolve her.

The Sith Lord became Chancellor. The Queen became Senator. The boy became Jedi, and Chosen One, and saviour. He had never had power, and now he was told he had too much, and could not use it wisely, and had to obey the orders of those who knew better. One form of slavery for another, or so it seemed to the boy who had been a slave.

The boy loved the Queen, loved the Senator, and she loved him, too. The Chancellor started another war. The boy and the Senator married, secretly, with only two droids to bear witness.

The war went on. The Senator who had been Queen had been right: it brought only grief.

The Chancellor gained even more power, and acted as father to the boy who had lost his mother. The war went on. People starved. The Galaxy bought slaves of its own to fight, and the boy who had never stopped being a slave did not say a word. No one else saw it as he did. His point of view did not matter, or so he thought.

The war went on. The boy became a man, who feared losing, as he had so many years before, everyone he loved to fate. He did not understand the consequences of that fear. This does not absolve him. 

The man said to the Sith Lord, whom he loved as a father, “I cannot live without her.” 

The Sith Lord said, “What are you willing to sacrifice to ensure you never have to?”

Everything, said the man. Prove it, said the Sith Lord, and the man sold his freedom again. 

The war stopped. The Sith Lord became an Emperor. The man became his agent. The Senator, with two newborn children in her arms, became a rebel.

 

 

“It’s much more complicated than that,” says Mama at breakfast. 

“It’s not,” says Uncle Obi-Wan, bleakly.

“He was a good man,” says Cody. “Right until he wasn’t. But that’s war for you.”

 

 

“I loved him,” Mom says softly, in the captain’s office, the spell of the story still snug around them. “I still love him.”

“Where is he?” Leia whispers.

A sad smile. “With the Emperor, I imagine, or on his orders.”

“Why?” asks Luke.

Mom quiets for a moment, and then speaks carefully, as though she has selected each and every word specifically for this moment. “Because he needed me alive more than he needed freedom,” she says. “And because I needed freedom more than I needed him.”

Luke considers this seriously. Leia says, “But he was wrong.”

“Why?” asks Mom.

“Because he didn’t just sell his own freedom,” Leia says. She’s been to refugee camps, and seen the prisoners and slaves that Mom and the family have freed as they transport them to the Alliance for care and debriefing. She and Luke pay attention to their lessons. 

“He sold the Galaxy’s,” says Luke. 

“My brave, brilliant stars,” Mom says, and opens her arms. “Come here.”

 

 

When they ask, this is how Uncle Obi-Wan tells the story:

A long time ago, far far away, there was a boy who was strong in the Force, and who knew no family but the Jedi. He trained and studied well, and followed the guidelines established by the Council and as much as he could, he followed the will of the Force. It was all he knew; it was the only life he could imagine. But ignorance is not the same as innocence. 

The boy became a Padawan, chosen by a Knight of Master Yoda’s own line. The Padawan could not conceive of a greater honour, and learned eagerly, with dedication, even when his Master disobeyed the Council in the name of the Force. This is a lesson the Padawan did not learn well enough: There is a difference between the will of the Force, and the will of those who wield it, and between the two, the Galaxy holds its breath.

The Padawan and his Knight were sent on a diplomatic mission to Naboo, where a droid army was preparing to invade, and a young Queen—

(“Mom!” says Luke. 

“Yes,” says Obi-Wan, smiling. “This is where I met your mother.”)

—a young Queen sought to defend her people against war. To do so, she could not stay with them. The Padawan and his Master were to escort them to the Republic capital at Coruscant, to give evidence before the Senate.

(“The Senator who was a Sith Lord,” says Leia darkly.

“Yes,” says Obi-Wan, unsmiling. “We did not know then. But ignorance is not the same as innocence.”)

But their ship was damaged during the escape from Naboo, and the Queen and her handmaidens and the Jedi could not reach Coruscant without help. They went instead to Tatooine. 

(Here, Obi-Wan pauses, and squeezes his eyes shut. It’s a long moment before he speaks again, and Leia fears interrupting him: he’s withdrawn tightly into himself, all but vanished from the Force.

“This was your father’s homeworld,” he says at last. He looks to Luke. “You look so much like he did, when we met him.”

There’s a quick, hurting thing across Luke’s face at the words, something Leia understands without even needing the Force woven between them to tell her. It hurts, to be told that you remind the people you love most of the person who hurt them worst. It hurts to have that thwarted, desperate, doomed hope thrust upon you.

“And me?” Leia asks, to end the moment. Luke presses up against her, his side warming her own.

Obi-Wan chucks her on the chin, kind in this. “Like your mother, I imagine. She was older when we met. But you have her colouring. Your father’s bones. Her eyes.”)

On Tatooine, they met an enslaved boy called Anakin. The Knight freed him and brought him to Coruscant with the Queen to train as a Jedi, even though he was nine, and too old to train.

(Luke and Leia exchange a glance: they are nearly nine, too old to train. Leia is seized by a dreadful thought. What if they cannot become Jedi, heroes, protectors? 

And then, just as quickly, the fear passes. Mama and Mom and Rex and Cody and Socks aren’t Jedi. They’re heroes and protectors. They don’t need lightsabers to do good.

“No one needs a lightsaber to do good,” says Obi-Wan later, when she asks him. “This is another lesson I did not learn well enough. A lesson that the Jedi Order did not learn well enough.”)

The Knight and his Padawan took Anakin back to Naboo; the Temple would not keep him, and they had a responsibility to help the Queen free her people. There, Anakin proved himself twice a hero: after freeing the Queen and the Jedi from Tatooine, he freed the Queen’s planet from invasion and occupation. 

The Knight and his Padawan duelled a Sith Lord—(“No, not that one,” says Obi-Wan, when Leia opens her mouth to ask; Luke, exasperated: “How many _are_ there?”)—called Darth Maul. The Knight perished. The Padawan didn’t, and in surviving, became a Knight.

(“And the Sith Lord?” asks Luke.

“That,” Obi-Wan says with great finality, “is a very long story for another day.”)

The new Knight took Anakin as his Padawan; the Council reluctantly agreed, intimidated by the return of the Sith. 

(“But fear—” Luke starts.

“Yes,” says Obi-Wan tiredly. “You may have noticed that the Jedi were very hypocritical.”

“What does _that_ mean?” Leia demands.

“Oh, for—” says Obi-Wan, and does his best to explain.)

 

 

Later, Luke overhears Obi-Wan and Mom talking quietly about their stories, about Luke and Leia’s father:

“Why do they interrupt me and not you?” Obi-Wan says.

“Because,” Mom says primly, “I am their mother, and their teacher, and they know to save their questions for the end with me.”

“Oh,” says Obi-Wan, defeated. 

_it’s also because mom explains things better_ , Luke sends, bright with laughter that bubbles up Leia’s spine for the rest of the day. It’s true; Mom does explain things really well. Mom says this is because her time in the Senate forced her to learn how to explain very complex things to very stupid people. Luke and Leia aren’t stupid at all, so explaining things to them is very easy by comparison.

(Even later, when it is just Obi-Wan and Padmé—and he’s scouted the ship, the twins are fast asleep in their bunks—Obi-Wan says plaintively, “But I had to explain things to _Anakin.”_

Padmé laughs.)

 

 

“Now,” says Obi-Wan, “—where were we?”

“Hypocrisy,” says Leia very carefully, and Luke beams at her, proud of her proper pronunciation. 

“Ah, yes,” says Obi-Wan. “We’ll be staying on that theme.”

 

 

Fear leads to anger, anger to hate, and hate to the Dark Side. This is what the Jedi taught. But in the face of the resurgence of the Sith and the appearance of a boy who might be Chosen, who was more powerful than any of the Council, the Jedi were afraid. But it was wrong for a Jedi to be afraid; a Jedi should not be frightened. So the Jedi convinced themselves that the Chosen One, Anakin, was afraid, and dangerous. And in time, they convinced him, too.

(“See,” says Luke, “that’s much clearer.”

“Shh!” says Obi-Wan. “Save your questions for the end!”)

More was at work than the Jedi or Anakin. The Dark Side clouded everything. The Jedi could not see as they once had. This, too, frightened them. And the Knight—

(“This is you, though,” Luke says, expression earnest even though Leia can feel the mischief in his fingers like it’s her own. “To be clear.”

“ _Yes_ , it’s me,” says Obi-Wan. “You know, the two of you are never this much trouble in your other lessons.”

Leia and Luke exchange a disbelieving glance. Obi-Wan looks at them both, and sighs. 

“Well, I suppose you’re right. We all remember the Speeder Incident.”

“Do we?” Luke asks, in perfect innocence, “because it seems you didn’t—”

“Do you want the story or not?” Obi-Wan demands, and Luke settles back, radiating satisfaction. Leia mirrors it back to him. 

It’s hard, for Obi-Wan, this story. Hard for him not to get lost in the past, or bogged down in the mire of his own guilt. If they can drag his focus here, all the better. Especially if he doesn’t realise that’s what they’re doing.)

The Knight was afraid, too. Afraid of not being enough for the boy. Afraid that the boy would not justify the sacrifices the Knight had made. Afraid of what he did not understand. Ignorance is not the same as innocence, and this is why: He had the opportunity to learn, and wasted it.

How? (Obi-Wan preempts Leia’s question.) He did not ask the boy to tell him of Tatooine. He did not ask to understand the life of a slave. He did not ask what it meant to have a mother, or the significance of the tea recipe the boy so carefully guarded. When the boy felt, as he so often did, the Knight did not ask about his feelings. He shared only his own training, and did not consider that what benefited a youngling raised in the Temple might not help a lonely, traumatised boy who missed his mother.

He had these questions, and the opportunity to ask them. But he never did.

 

 

“This is why,” Obi-Wan says, “your mother teaches you as she does. History, so that you learn from our mistakes. And perspective, so that you learn to see another point of view. Compassion is the most important thing we can teach you: it is the best of what drove the Jedi and the Naboo and, when Anakin was ours, it is the best of what drove him, too.”

 

 

The next time they rendezvous with the Aunties, Leia and Luke are prepared.

“What was he like?” Luke asks.

“Sweet,” says Auntie Rabé, “and kind and terrifyingly reckless, as a boy. He took risks that should have killed him, but he always survived. His ancestors were watching over him.”

“Then why didn’t they stop him from joining the Emperor?” Leia demands.

“My darling girl,” says Rabé. “One cannot force another person to choose as one would like. Not if they have love in their hearts. The ancestors, and we, may counsel and offer wisdom, but another’s choice is not ours to make.”

 

 

“Impulsive,” says Auntie Moteé, “like your mother, but without her subtlety. He loathed politics. Reckless. Kind. Arrogant. He wore everything on his face.”

 

 

“And with Mom?”

Auntie Dormé looks at them somberly. 

“He loved her from the moment he met her,” she says. “As well as he knew how. But it wasn’t enough. Love is powerful, my stars, but alone, it is a tragedy lying in wait.”

 

 

“Oh,” says Uncle Rex. “Brilliant. Utterly mad, but brilliant. Best Jedi I ever fought under. He was one of us, y’know? A brother in all but name. With him, we were all equals. He never asked us to do anything he wasn’t already doing and more. And he was a great strategist. Skywalker and Tano, they only got the hardest missions. Clankers never saw the likes of him coming.”

He pauses, and adds, soft, “’Course, neither did we, in the end.”

 

 

Socks takes her time in answering, brow creased in thought. A few seats over, Auntie B has gone very still, though her one hand still guides knitting needles in and out of stitches.

“Complicated,” Socks says at last. A tiny smile softens her face as she looks at them. “I know that’s maybe not what you want to hear—”

“We want the truth,” says Leia fiercely. 

“We want to understand,” Luke offers, quiet.

“Those are big questions,” Socks says. Her lekku sway gently as she settles back against the seat. “Not that I’d expect anything less from Padmé Amidala’s children. Well, he was—loyal. To a fault. People always mattered more to him than a cause. At the height of the Clone Wars, it was easy to imagine him leaving it all behind, if Obi-Wan and Padmé had asked him to. But he expected the exact same type of loyalty, too. People, not politics. He had no patience for politics.”

“Is that why he left?”

“I think there’s no one, simple answer as to why he left,” Socks says. “If you ask Yoda, he’ll say it’s because Anakin flouted the Jedi Code and had attachments, and these drove him to the Dark Side. It can be hard to see complexities from a distance.”

“But why do _you_ think he left?”

Socks takes the question as seriously as she always does, when they’re the ones asking. 

“People, not politics,” she says. “I think Anakin tried to put people he cared about, like your mom, above the Republic. And when your mom, and Obi-Wan, and everyone else didn’t, because they put politics first, he saw it as a betrayal. A sign that they didn’t care for him the way he did for them. So he stuck with Palpatine, who appeared to be the one person who thought like Anakin. But Palpatine only has loyalty to himself. It’s doomed to fail.”

“But why is he like that?” Luke asks, and Leia snaps her mouth shut, her question about that ambiguous _it’s_ vanishing.

“That’s the trillion-credit question, isn’t it?” Socks says, smiling and sad, like Mom, when she talks about this. She hums. “You know I’ve worked on Tatooine for a while. Since you were born, almost. Helping slaves find freedom. And you know that your father was enslaved, until he was about your age.”

The knowledge itches under Leia’s skin, the ghost of a slaver’s implant, and she shudders. Luke’s hand finds hers, the way his mind already has, and wraps around her as if in protection. 

“Alright?” Ahsoka asks gently. Leia nods, though she has to grind her teeth together to do it. It’s important to know this: the Force wraps around her like a python, heavy and immobilizing. 

“One of the cruelest parts of slavery is that it tears families apart,” Ahsoka says softly. “In bondage and in freedom. You’re either sold away, or you escape—and you’re far more likely to escape alone than with siblings, lovers, parents, uncles, cousins. Family spreads like a constellation. Sometimes the distance is insurmountable. So you treasure it while it lasts, and you spend the rest of your life looking for your mother, your brother, your sister. You learn to value the people you care about over systems that don’t care for you at all. It’s—I’ve never seen anything like it outside of slave systems. The dedication to family. It’s sacred, almost. Because it’s so rare, and so precarious.”

Socks leans forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped before her. “Listen to me,” she says. “This is so important, Leia, Luke. If you ever meet your father, and there is a chance you can get away, you must not tell him who you are. If you do, he will stop at nothing to keep you. And if you ever meet your father, and you fear for your life, you must tell him who you are. If you do, he will stop at nothing to protect you.”

Leia hugs Luke tight, distressed, but asks: “Why are you telling us this?”

“Mom says you believe there’s good in him,” Luke clarifies uncertainly. “If he knew about us, wouldn’t he come back?”

“I do believe that there’s still good in him,” Socks agrees. “And everything I do is to bring him back. But I would _never_ put his redemption above you, do you understand? You will always come first.”

 

 

That night, Luke holds her tight, arms snug around her middle, cradling her self in the Force. 

_separated,_ Leia thinks. She can’t get the story of slave families out of her head; she thinks of Anakin Skywalker, and Grandmother Shmi, whose grave they have seen, and feels a raw, consumptive panic. 

_i’m not going anywhere_ , Luke sends, fierce, burning like a star with conviction. _leia—i will always be with you._

Close like this, it’s hard to tell where she ends and he begins, in the Force, in their bunk. Since they were cells, curled around each other, growing together: she cannot imagine life without Luke; the thought of it paralyzes. But something in her stirs in awful premonition at his promise, and she can’t say anything, can barely think.

In the end, she just holds him tighter.

 

 

“Your father,” says Mom, “did many brave, noble, and good things. But he has also done many terrible things. Cruel things. The two do not cancel each other out. We will know his character by what he does. Until then—we will prove our own.”

“What if he comes back?” Luke asks. He is very pale; his eyes seem to burn in his face, like comets.

“Would you want him in your lives if he did?” Mom asks gently.

They look at each other, and Leia knows her expression mirrors Luke’s. They have never met him, but he is part of them. He is already with them. They do not have the words to explain it to Mom, who is not Force-sensitive, or to Uncle Obi, who has never had a parent in the Force that did not choose him. 

“Would you?” Leia asks, hating how small her voice is.

“I don’t know,” Mom says simply. “I love your mama. I am happy with her. I love our family. But I loved him, too. I don’t know how to reconcile those loves.”

“Reconcile,” Luke echoes. “What does that mean?”

Mom searches for the right words. “To bring together people, or ideas, that have been separated,” she says at last. “To heal what has been sundered.”

 

 

 _what do you think,_ Leia sends in the dark, close enough to Luke that his hip grates against hers. 

_is he still good?_

Luke shudders, and turns in the bunk, pulling her to cover his back like a shield. She goes immediately, protectively, and thinks again that they’ve always been like this, curled around each other, like the Twin Suns of Tatooine, forever chasing each other around the desert. 

_i don’t know_ , Luke whisper-sends back. He shudders again. The uncertainty eats at them like entropy.

 

 

Life goes on. 

The Aunties leave again, though Socks and B stay a bit longer. They fly to see the Wookiees on Kashyyyk, to deliver intelligence to rebels on Jedha, to confer with Tion Meddon on Utapau. Socks and B leave them on Lothal, and Mama allows them a few hours in the grasslands, where Leia and Luke chase Loth-cats around the stone towers and through the grasses until they collapse, laughing, too dizzy to stand.

Mom writes speeches, and practices them, and then Mama powders and paints her face, and the whole ship gets very very quiet while Mom talks to the Galaxy.

Luke and Leia are never allowed in the room when Mom talks like this; she’s terrified that they might move into the holovid or make a sound, and all her efforts to keep them safe, to keep them secret, will be lost. But they watch her after, and Mama paints their faces, too, in consolation.

“The scar of remembrance,” she tells them, drawing the line in red across their lower lips, one after another. “You are Naboo as much as you are anything else, my stars, so this scar is yours to bear, as well: to ensure we never forget what we have suffered, and that we remember there is always another way.”

Blue tears, red circles, diamonds like Auntie B’s tattoos: Luke and Leia learn the meaning of each shape and color, how and when to apply it, the best ways to bind the brushes, the recipe for each paint. They learn, or start to, the elaborate hairstyles of the Naboo royalty: braids and curls, the complicated arrangements of combs and pins and hairpieces, each supporting the other. Luke spends hours, sometimes, when Leia is frustrated with math, or when Threepio is being especially annoying, braiding her hair. She does the same for him when he works with Artoo. 

 

 

Life goes on. The Galaxy wheels, slow and inexorable, through the universe. The _Spark_ visits Dagobah, where Yoda waves his gimer stick and warns of darkness, and Mace works with them on lightsaber forms, and Luminara teaches them healing, picking up where Auntie B left off. Bail Organa meets them in deep space to exchange information and argue with Mom and slip Luke and Leia early birthday presents. They spend less time among the stars, and more on planets: Dantooine, Crait, Ryloth, Serrano. The Aunties, and Aunt Ti, meet them there, and travel with them to Dathomir, where Socks and Auntie B are waiting with a—

“Friend,” Socks supplies at last, and winces. The friend, mouth like a gash in her face, laughs. She sounds like death.

“That’ll do as well as any other name, I suppose,” the friend says.

“Are you an Auntie, too?” Leia asks interestedly.

The friend looks at Mom, and then bends down to meet Leia’s eyes. “Aren’t you precious,” she says. “Let’s say I’m a friend. And as a friend, you’d do well to stay with the ship, precious girl.”

Luke and Leia stay on the ship, restless and on-edge: Dathomir feels like smoke, clouded and suffocating. Obi-Wan stays with them. 

“The Dathomiri witches don’t like males much,” he explains, “and we’re trying to be diplomatic.”

“So it’s _not_ because you’re our uncle and a great fighter and can protect us?” Luke asks, and Uncle Obi sighs, long-suffering. 

“Finish dinner, go on,” he says, and Luke shines a grin at Leia, and the smokiness fades, just a little.

 

 

Later: Obi-Wan asking, in hushed tones, “How did it go?”

Leia nudges Luke, drags them both discontentedly from sleep to eavesdrop. 

(“Troublemakers,” Auntie Socks had said once, when she caught them at it, the fondness in her voice not entirely for them.)

“Well—” Mom starts, dissatisfaction running her edges ragged.

“Better than you think,” the friend from before says. When she speaks, Leia sees iron shavings behind her eyes, corroding into rusty flakes. She shivers, and listens harder. “Most do not survive an encounter with the Witches.”

“They made no promises, but they listened,” Mom concedes. “It is a hopeful start.”

“I warn you again, Senator,” the friend says. “Make no deals with the Witches. It will end very badly for you.”

“Thank you, Lady Ventress,” Mom says in her politician’s voice, the one she uses whenever she talks to the Galaxy or Tion Meddon or their Queen. “I know it was not easy, coming here, but I am grateful for your guidance.”

“Remember that gratitude,” Ventress says. “I certainly will.”

“Remember yours, Asajj,” Socks says sharply, and then Mama comes to check on them, so Leia and Luke swiftly close their eyes and even their breathing. It disquiets Mama, and Mom, when they hear things they’re not meant to. The family wants to protect them, the way they weren’t protected in their youth. Leia understands that, but it annoys her to no end. 

In the morning, Ventress is gone, and so are Socks and B.

 

 

Life goes on: they learn their lessons, they help make repairs to the _Spark_ ; they sing to the hydroponic garden, and feel the Force expand around them at the speed of the universe. They see new planets and revisit others, courier people or information across the galaxy, see more than they can imagine.

It’s a miracle, Leia thinks drowsily, being alive, here and now, with her family; with Luke. A miracle.

And yet—

 

 

When it breaks, this is how:

Leia, feverish, cranky, confined to the medbay while Mama watches over her, smelling like the soft lilia flowers in her soap, the clean scent of her tea; Obi-Wan and Mom, preparing to resupply planetside on Cyphar, which they’ve done dozens of times before. Luke, pressing his brow to hers, and whispering a promise: _i’ll bring back lots of chocolate._

 _you better,_ Leia sends, and coughs miserably. Mama tousles his hair, dropping a kiss to the crown of his head. “Iced joola might be better than chocolate,” she suggests, smiling, and hands him a few credits. She knows them too well. “Go on; your mother and Obi-Wan are waiting.”

Leia settles, disgruntled, back against the pillows once she hears Mom and Obi-Wan and Luke gone. Uncle Cody pokes his head in, smiling kindly. “Hey, tiny two,” he says. (Luke is tiny one.) “Y’need anything?”

“A cure?” she asks hopefully.

Cody scrunches his face. “’Fraid we’re fresh out, tiny two. But I’ve downloaded the latest _Dex’s Diner_ episodes if you want me to set them up in here?”

“Uncle Cody,” says Leia fervently, “I _love_ you.”

“Same to you, tiny two.”

 _Dex’s Diner_ is the best holo out there, loosely based on a friend of Uncle Obi’s, always sweet and fun and adventurous and hopeful. It’s also singlehandedly responsible for teaching Luke and Leia about puns. In between blowing her nose, coughing, and drinking all the tea Mama brings her, Leia watches, and laughs, and, eventually, drifts into sleep.

 

 

When she wakes, Leia knows immediately that something is wrong. Mama is not here but—in the mess, that’s right, organising the pantry. She can hear her soft singing, and Cody banging around in the engine room, but her sense of them in the Force is clouded, like it’s been since she’d gotten sick. It’s like trying to hear a whispered confession when there’s water in your ears—and after Mon Calamari, Leia is convinced that there’s very little that’s worse than that. The Force tunes in and out, muffled by the sloshing sensation of phlegm and her headache, but Leia strains towards it, feeling acutely, inexplicably, anxious.

“Have you heard from Mom yet?” she asks Mama when Mama comes to check on her.

“No, my star, but they’ve only been gone an hour,” Mama tells her, and strokes her hair. “Is everything alright?”

“I don’t know,” Leia says, distracted for a second as the Force abruptly roars back into focus around her, and fades away just as quickly. She shivers. She’s never felt anything like this. It reminds her of Dathomir, a little, but—

No, she can’t explain this. Not to a non-Force user. 

She waits, on-edge and anxious, not comforted by Mama’s calm, nor the soothing tea blend she delivers shortly after. She thinks of Mace on Dagobah, explaining shatterpoints to her and Luke: _it’s being able to see where the galaxy will change_ , he’d said. If this is a shatterpoint, then the where is Cyphar; the when is impending.

 

 

It starts with screaming. Leia jerks upright and out of bed, tripping in the blankets Threepio had brought in when she’d first gotten sick; she stumbles, blames her illness, knocks her head against the table next to the medicapsule. Her vision, briefly, goes staticky black. The screaming does not stop. 

“Luke,” she whispers, or thinks she does; _Luke!_

Shouting his name out into the Force hurts so, so much. Her terror hurts worse. The screaming is the only thing she can understand; it is all there is. It is the only evidence of the world around her. It is the only proof of her existence. In the medbay, hands cupped over her ears, Leia opens her mouth. If she screams, she cannot distinguish it from the rest. 

_Leia!_

Leia stumbles forward again, staggering to the door. Her head feels as though it is being split in two. But the call, that was—that was Luke, Luke needs her, Luke calls for her—nothing matters except her brother. Leia drags herself forward, the whole of her attention focussed on Luke, tunnel-visioned. The edges of the galaxy dusk into black around her. And still the screaming—why does no one hear it, where is Mama, where is _Luke!_

Her brother, her twin, Luke who is half herself—Leia shoves forward, and it’s so hard, like pulling herself free from a tractor beam; she pushes through that terrible screaming and the world-ending darkness and the cold that isn’t just the metal of the ship on her bare feet. _Luke!_ she shouts, she screams, in that starry way only he can hear her, but he doesn’t answer; the brilliant nebulae and matter of the Force is dark, wrong, between them. She’s no longer in the ship; she’s in the wasteland that was their oasis, barefoot and cold and alone, and still her head reverberates with screams. _Luke!!_

And then she sees him, burning like a small sun in the darkness, all attention bent away from her, and the dark is so cold and she feels so small that she runs towards him, unable to do anything else, terrified of what she’ll find. _Ancestors,_ she prays, remembering Auntie Rabé’s words, Mom’s invocations, Mama’s wisdom, _Force—bring him back to me, protect him, let him be okay—come back to me! Luke, please—!_

And then he sees her, and Leia breaks from the Force, into Luke’s eyes: Cyphar, the trading post between Afe and Hollenside, humans and Twi’leks and Cyphari pressed back in fear—white armour gleaming in the sunlight—Mom, where’s Mom, where’s Obi-Wan?—

—and Luke, alone while the Galaxy turns, and watches, and waits, with a man in black kneeling before him. There’s a sense of recognition, of interest, that Leia reads in the man, and then there’s just fear. Luke shoves her from his perspective bruisingly, and she stumbles back into the Force between them, and the fear—the terror that pierces them is so huge and awful and all-consuming that Leia can’t breathe; it’s drowning her; Luke is drowning too. She hears Uncle Obi in a memory, _do not let the fear control you_ , Master Yoda’s dire warning, _fear leads to the dark side_ —but it’s too much, too much to bear, and Luke knows this just as well as she does.

Then, a memory: Socks smiling, Mama’s laughter; Mom, small and determined: _of course I am afraid; we live in terrifying times, my loves._

_But one cannot be brave without first being afraid._

Which one of them finds the memory? Which one of them pushes it forward? Who is trying to fortify the other? She doesn’t know; she has always felt one with Luke in the Force. It could be either, it could be both; she will never know.

She’s caught off guard when it starts, still paralysed, Mom’s words ringing in her ears, temporarily hushing the screaming that has never stopped—that will never stop. Here, in this place that is sacrosanct, inviolate, where Luke and Leia are one, closer than the cells that grew in Mom’s womb, closer than they can hold each other at night, something begins to fracture between them, and Leia, even if she does not know the words to describe it, understands immediately, instinctively, what’s happening.

It’s Luke, her Luke, her brother, her twin, shoving her away with everything he has—forcing a barrier between them—if she were not screaming before, she screams now, in the Force, on the _Spark_ , everywhere she is or has ever been—she screams— _Luke! Let me in, let me stay—LUKE!!!—_ but he doesn’t answer. His dear face, round like her own—Leia can see it so clearly, and suddenly—

There’s a moment, a fraction of a second before the breaking, where Luke looks at her, where Leia throws everything she has, everything she is, against the barrier he’s drawn up between them, charging at it with all the blind, thoughtless desperation of an animal fighting for its survival. She cannot stop; she could not; he mustn’t ask it of her, but Luke looks at her—his mouth moves—she can’t hear him, can’t understand what he says.

She screams; they break; she falls.

 

 

He’s gone.

 

 

Mama found her quickly, more quickly than Leia understood. “You were screaming,” Mama says, bloodlessly pale, eyes huge in her face, “and throwing yourself against the airlock—Leia—”

Mama holds back tears as she presses a bacta patch to Leia’s head, and bandages her scraped-raw hands and feet, the bloody ache on her knee.

“Leia—” Mama whispers. “What happened?”

Leia looks at her, and has no voice. Whatever is in her expression must say enough, because Mama starts crying in earnest, and pulls Leia into her arms, kissing her head, her hands, her cheek. Artoo stands guard at the door, photoreceptor blinking steadily, until Cody bursts in.

“Is she—” he asks, and Leia feels Mama shake her head, feels the damp of tears against her hair. 

“They’re back,” he says, and Mama whispers, “Thank the ancestors,” and uncurls from Leia to go greet them.

“Stay with her, Artoo,” Mama instructs, and vanishes.

Leia waits dully; she knows what to expect. And seconds later, Mama, crying out, _“Where is my son?”_

The medbay door opens again: Mom, pale, eyes brimming; Obi-Wan, cradling his arm to his chest. Mama, wild, and Cody, afraid, following.

“Captain Cody,” Mom says, steel in her voice, “I will not say this again. Get us out of here—make for Dagobah.”

“Padmé,” Mama says, unsteady, “—we can’t leave without him, _where is our son?”_

“Sit down, Obi-Wan,” Mom says, but her hands are shaking. “Cody, get us out of here or I’ll do it myself.”

Mama grabs Mom’s shoulders; Obi-Wan settles at the edge of the medicapsule, face blank with pain. His hand is gone: a blackened stump is all that remains. 

“Padmé,” Mama whispers. “Where is Luke?”

Mom pulls herself up, sets her jaw. “Luke…is in no immediate danger,” she says. “He is alive. Anakin has him.”

Mama collapses into a chair; Artoo whistles shrilly. Dimly, Leia is glad that Threepio is powered down for the day; this would be even more unbearable than it is if they had to comfort him, too. 

Mama looks to Leia. “—you knew,” she whispers, and Mom turns sharply, takes in Leia’s bandages and expression.

“My heart,” Mom says, and goes to her. She smells like sweat and burnt meat, like dust, like pain; but Leia allows herself to be held, allows herself to break as the _Spark_ breaks atmosphere and enters hyperspace, weeping for herself, for Obi-Wan, for her mothers, for Artoo and Threepio, when they tell him; for her father; for Luke. _oh, Luke._

Luke is alive, but taken by the enemy.

 

 

“I should have been there,” Mama whispers in the night, hyperspace passing around them. Leia is curled between them in their bed; her own bunk had felt perilously empty, and they had not turned her away. “After I promised you—How can we go on? We have to get him back.”

“We will,” Mom says, like a promise, fiercer than a solar flare. “I swear to you, we will.”

“This is the beginning of the end, I fear,” Mama says. A tear gleams down her cheek in the dark.

Mom sits up; her hand strokes Leia’s hair, moves to squeeze Mama’s fingers. “No,” she says, calm and implacable. “It is only the end of the beginning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> business things:
> 
> references!  
> \+ “Ignorance is not the same as innocence”—from the inimitable _Batman v. Superman_  
>  +[this meta](https://stitchingatthecircuitboard.tumblr.com/post/114131187879/belinsky-going-off-my-tags-on-this-post-the) remains hugely influential to my reading of Anakin, and was particularly useful for writing Padmé and Ahsoka’s accounts.  
> +the nod to the tea that Anakin makes in Obi-Wan’s story is a reference to Fialleril’s Tatooine world building; you should read everything they’ve written.  
> + _Dex’s Diner_ is 100% based on _Bob’s Burgers_ , which I am perpetually rewatching.  
> \+ “Luke was alive, but taken by the enemy”—bastardised from the closing line of Tolkien’s _The Two Towers_  
>   
>  ICYMI, or: a few recs to keep you going until part 2 gets going (in order of what i bookmarked most recently)  
> +[Heretic Pride by Fialleril](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13455561), wherein Anakin and Padmé keep in touch post-TPM and free the slaves  
> +[The Edge Between the Sun and the Stars by rain_sleet_snow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11540355), which is, as far as I am concerned, sequel canon.  
> +[How the Other Half Lives by aradian_nights](https://archiveofourown.org/series/609151), LEIA SKYWALKER AND LUKE ORGANA, I’VE BEEN SCREAMING AND CRYING FOR 8000 YEARS  
> +[Probability Matrices by tanarill](https://archiveofourown.org/series/536638), an ROTS au wherein people talk to each other and get so. much. therapy  
> +[Won’t You Let Us Wander by angel_deux](https://archiveofourown.org/series/624404), an Everyone Lives Rogue One au that is so tender and beautiful that I am traumatised.  
> +[The Last Poem of Jedha by schweinsty](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9248573), aka the most beautiful meditation on loss, resistance, and hope you’ll read this week, starring My Son Bodhi Rook  
> +[Ouroboros by bedlamsbard](https://archiveofourown.org/series/79300), which you’ve surely all read because it is the best Naboo world building and also the best Padmé.  
>   
> emotional things:
> 
> folks, i have been overwhelmed by the response to this fic. the attention, care, and thoughtfulness with which you read it has humbled me. seriously, your liveblogs, your essays, your !!! emotions (...same) kept me going this past year as i struggled to find time to write and some semblance of sanity under the current administration. 
> 
> which is all just to say—i love y’all. thanks for giving this fic a shot, thanks for sticking with it through the ridiculously long hiatus, thanks for your kindness and your humor and your grace. i am so grateful to all of you. 
> 
> see you in part 2, “the colder kiss of steel,” as soon as i’ve got something ready.


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